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May 8, 2025

Germany Cracks Down on Asylum Seekers One Day After Friedrich Merz Becomes Chancellor
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In Germany, Friedrich Merz was elected as chancellor Tuesday in a second
round of parliamentary voting, just hours after he failed to clinch the
ballot in the first round - a first in postwar Germany.

The new government announced Wednesday Germany will start rejecting
undocumented migrants at its border, and plans to deploy thousands more
police officers to crack down on arrivals. The move undoes a 2015 order
by then-Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose leadership was defined in large
part by her welcoming of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, many
of whom had fled war in Syria.


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