BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s interior minister said Thursday that the number of people turned back at the country’s borders increased by nearly half in the new government’s first week in office after it stepped up police checks at its frontiers, and that those rejected included asylum-seekers.

The government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who made tougher migration policy a central plank of his campaign for Germany’s election in February, took office on May 6. The following day, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said more police would be stationed at the border to curb irregular migration and some asylum-seekers trying to enter Europe’s biggest economy would be turned away.

Speaking on Thursday as he visited the Kiefersfelden crossing on Germany’s southern frontier with Austria, Dobrindt said 739 people were turned back at the borders over the past seven days, a 45% increase over the previous week’s figure of 511.

Of the 51 people who sought asylum at the border in the past week, 32 were rejected while the rest were identified as belonging to “vulnerable groups” and allowed into Germany, he said. The previous week, all 44 people who sought asylum at the border were allowed in.

“I want to break the logic of criminal gangs and smugglers who promise people that, in exchange for paying 5,000 ($5,607), 10,000 or 20,000 euros, they will bring them into the German welfare system,” Dobrindt said. “This logic must be broken and it must be clear that if you are standing at Germany’s border you don’t automatically come into our country.”

45% more people rejected at German border after checks were stepped up, minister says | iNFOnews.ca — German police officers carry out checks at the border crossing coming from Austria near Kiefersfelden, Germany, Thursday, May 15, 2025 as top security official says that the number of people turned back at the country’s borders increased by nearly half in the new government’s first week in office after it stepped up police checks at its frontiers. (Peter Kneffel/dpa via AP)

Germany’s previous government already had introduced checks at the country’s borders with neighboring nations, which the new administration is stepping up.

Merz told lawmakers on Wednesday that Germany is and will remain “a country of immigration.”

“But the development of the last 10 years also has shown that we allowed too much uncontrolled immigration, and too much low-qualified migration into our labor market and above all into our social security systems,” he said.