As the world watched in awe five years ago, new faces were welcomed into Germany with balloons and banners proclaiming 'We love refugees'.
More than a million strangers headed there from faraway lands at the height of Europe's biggest migration crisis since World War II hoping for a new life in the West.
In a rallying cry to her nation, the German chancellor Angela Merkel declared in the autumn of 2015: 'We can do this. We are strong and can manage it.'
But today the celebrations for migrants are over in this powerhouse of the European Union.
Many of the foreigners who entered Germany in those heady days are being forcibly sent home to Africa, south Asia, the Middle East, Russia and the Balkans on secret flights, marshalled by security officers, after being frogmarched to airports from their beds by armed police.
The problem was that Syrians were not alone in asking for sanctuary. Many migrants — including jihadists and economic opportunists — pretended to be Syrian refugees. They came in under the radar as the number queuing to get to Germany grew each day.
At a camp in Leipzig near the Polish border, a 35-year-old Iranian migrant who has learned German off his own bat by watching the national TV, described the harsh reality.
He now has a low-level job, arranged through friends, in a giant car factory and said: 'The Germans have let refugees down. They treat us like cattle. They talk to us like two-year-olds, as though we can never be as intelligent as them because we are not German.
'They are deporting people daily. Eighty per cent of the 2,000 people in Leipzig's main migrant camp are African. I now have a flat, but I lived in the camp when I came to Germany.
'The Africans there are afraid. They are paid less than a euro a day by the German government to clean the place. That is modern slavery.'
He added: 'I watched the police come early one morning. They took an African away to the deportation plane in a police car. They had drugged him to keep him quiet. He was carried off like
Some 200,000 failed asylum seekers, illegal entrants, and foreigners convicted of crimes in their own countries or Germany are estimated to be listed for deportation flights. Many entered in 2015 when Mrs Merkel sent out her welcome message to refugees.
After a litany of terror attacks, sex assaults, and even murders by some who slipped in, the deportations are, unsurprisingly, popular with many Germans. The authorities operate with ruthless efficiency.
The migrants on board deportation planes are outnumbered by hand-picked security officers, many drawn from the police, wearing protective gear to stop attacks.
On a recent flight out of Leipzig carrying 45 Afghans back to their capital, Kabul, 70 officers were on guard throughout. Some of the Afghans were forced to wear 'body cuffs' restricting their upper body movement to lessen the threat of violence.
A German police union chief, Jorg Radek, said recently that many of the deportees — who now number tens of thousands each year — are in an 'exceptional state emotionally'.
As the world watched in awe five years ago, new faces were welcomed into Germany with balloons and banners proclaiming 'We love refugees'.
More than a million strangers headed there from faraway lands at the height of Europe's biggest migration crisis since World War II hoping for a new life in the West.
In a rallying cry to her nation, the German chancellor Angela Merkel declared in the autumn of 2015: 'We can do this. We are strong and can manage it.'
But today the celebrations for migrants are over in this powerhouse of the European Union.
Many of the foreigners who entered Germany in those heady days are being forcibly sent home to Africa, south Asia, the Middle East, Russia and the Balkans on secret flights, marshalled by security officers, after being frogmarched to airports from their beds by armed police.
The problem was that Syrians were not alone in asking for sanctuary. Many migrants — including jihadists and economic opportunists — pretended to be Syrian refugees. They came in under the radar as the number queuing to get to Germany grew each day.
At a camp in Leipzig near the Polish border, a 35-year-old Iranian migrant who has learned German off his own bat by watching the national TV, described the harsh reality.
He now has a low-level job, arranged through friends, in a giant car factory and said: 'The Germans have let refugees down. They treat us like cattle. They talk to us like two-year-olds, as though we can never be as intelligent as them because we are not German.
'They are deporting people daily. Eighty per cent of the 2,000 people in Leipzig's main migrant camp are African. I now have a flat, but I lived in the camp when I came to Germany.
'The Africans there are afraid. They are paid less than a euro a day by the German government to clean the place. That is modern slavery.'
He added: 'I watched the police come early one morning. They took an African away to the deportation plane in a police car. They had drugged him to keep him quiet. He was carried off like
Some 200,000 failed asylum seekers, illegal entrants, and foreigners convicted of crimes in their own countries or Germany are estimated to be listed for deportation flights. Many entered in 2015 when Mrs Merkel sent out her welcome message to refugees.
After a litany of terror attacks, sex assaults, and even murders by some who slipped in, the deportations are, unsurprisingly, popular with many Germans. The authorities operate with ruthless efficiency.
The migrants on board deportation planes are outnumbered by hand-picked security officers, many drawn from the police, wearing protective gear to stop attacks.
On a recent flight out of Leipzig carrying 45 Afghans back to their capital, Kabul, 70 officers were on guard throughout. Some of the Afghans were forced to wear 'body cuffs' restricting their upper body movement to lessen the threat of violence.
A German police union chief, Jorg Radek, said recently that many of the deportees — who now number tens of thousands each year — are in an 'exceptional state emotionally'.
As the world watched in awe five years ago, new faces were welcomed into Germany with balloons and banners proclaiming 'We love refugees'.
More than a million strangers headed there from faraway lands at the height of Europe's biggest migration crisis since World War II hoping for a new life in the West.
In a rallying cry to her nation, the German chancellor Angela Merkel declared in the autumn of 2015: 'We can do this. We are strong and can manage it.'
But today the celebrations for migrants are over in this powerhouse of the European Union.
Many of the foreigners who entered Germany in those heady days are being forcibly sent home to Africa, south Asia, the Middle East, Russia and the Balkans on secret flights, marshalled by security officers, after being frogmarched to airports from their beds by armed police.
The problem was that Syrians were not alone in asking for sanctuary. Many migrants — including jihadists and economic opportunists — pretended to be Syrian refugees. They came in under the radar as the number queuing to get to Germany grew each day.
At a camp in Leipzig near the Polish border, a 35-year-old Iranian migrant who has learned German off his own bat by watching the national TV, described the harsh reality.
He now has a low-level job, arranged through friends, in a giant car factory and said: 'The Germans have let refugees down. They treat us like cattle. They talk to us like two-year-olds, as though we can never be as intelligent as them because we are not German.
'They are deporting people daily. Eighty per cent of the 2,000 people in Leipzig's main migrant camp are African. I now have a flat, but I lived in the camp when I came to Germany.
'The Africans there are afraid. They are paid less than a euro a day by the German government to clean the place. That is modern slavery.'
He added: 'I watched the police come early one morning. They took an African away to the deportation plane in a police car. They had drugged him to keep him quiet. He was carried off like
Some 200,000 failed asylum seekers, illegal entrants, and foreigners convicted of crimes in their own countries or Germany are estimated to be listed for deportation flights. Many entered in 2015 when Mrs Merkel sent out her welcome message to refugees.
After a litany of terror attacks, sex assaults, and even murders by some who slipped in, the deportations are, unsurprisingly, popular with many Germans. The authorities operate with ruthless efficiency.
The migrants on board deportation planes are outnumbered by hand-picked security officers, many drawn from the police, wearing protective gear to stop attacks.
On a recent flight out of Leipzig carrying 45 Afghans back to their capital, Kabul, 70 officers were on guard throughout. Some of the Afghans were forced to wear 'body cuffs' restricting their upper body movement to lessen the threat of violence.
A German police union chief, Jorg Radek, said recently that many of the deportees — who now number tens of thousands each year — are in an 'exceptional state emotionally'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8890545/Five-years-ago-Angela-Merkel-threw-open-borders-million-migrants.html
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