The Federal Police must deploy between 13,000 and 14,000 officers to ensure the comprehensive border controls and associated blanket rejections of asylum seekers ordered by Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) one year ago. This information comes from the Federal Ministry of the Interior's response to an inquiry by the Greens parliamentary group, obtained by the newspapers of the Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland (RND, Wednesday editions).
"The intensification of temporarily reintroduced internal border controls since May 7-8, 2025, was also associated with a further increased deployment of Federal Police forces, totaling 13,000 to 14,000 operational personnel," the ministry stated in its response.
Andreas Roßkopf, chairman of the Police Union for the Federal Police, criticized this deployment. "We are missing 5,000 to 6,000 Federal Police officers at railway stations," he told RND newspapers. "These are crime hotspots where we are increasingly deployed and need more personnel."
It would make sense to draw on Federal Readiness Police forces for these tasks. "But these are still deployed on border duty, involving 800 to 1,000 officers weekly," Roßkopf said. With more technology, border controls could become faster and more flexible, requiring less personnel there. "Unfortunately, hardly anything has happened in this direction."
Marcel Emmerich, interior policy spokesman for the Greens parliamentary group, also voiced criticism. "The border blockades burden cross-border traffic, harm the economy, and violate law and order daily," he told RND newspapers. "
In the midst of an economic crisis, they put freight companies under massive pressure and bring goods traffic to a standstill." Dobrindt sells this as "Law and Order, but conceals that police forces are missing at railway stations, airports, and in combating serious crime." This creates less security.
Referring to several court decisions declaring the blanket rejection of asylum seekers unlawful, Emmerich continued: "The question arises how much arbitrariness and disregard for judicial decisions this minister wants to show without changing his course." The Greens have introduced a motion in the Bundestag aimed at stopping the practice.
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