In 2014, German authorities registered 10,884 deportations. This year, the number rose to 18,363 until the end of November, the interior ministry said.

According to the German Interior Ministry’s figures, Bavaria sent 3,643 asylum applicants back home, almost three times compared to the number last year. The situation was the same in Hesse, where 2,306 refugees were sent away in 2015 compared to 829 a year before. 2,140 refugees from Baden-Württemberg were made to leave Germany this year, compared to half that number in 2014, officials said.

North Rhine Westphalia, which has consistently been sending the largest number of refugees back home, sent 3,854 away this year. But the number was not a big jump compared to nearly 3,000 asylum seekers who were forced to go back to their homelands in 2014.

Thuringia was the only German state to have recorded a drop in deportation numbers. Officials there sent only 152 this year compared to 234 in 2014.

More than one million people
fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East have arrived in Germany this year. Several of Germany’s 16 states, struggling to organize shelter for the refugees, have
speeded up their asylum application procedures
in the last few months.

However, not all rejected applicants are deported and many of them leave on their own volition.

This year, 35,000 persons whose applications were rejected subsequently left Germany voluntarily, according to Germany’s Information Service on Migration (Informationsdienst Migration). Normally, a rejected applicant has 30 days to leave the Federal Republic.

mg/rg (dpa)