BERLIN: An asylum seeker deported to Afgha­nistan this month will be returned to Germany, the interior ministry said on Wednesday, in the latest of a series of scandals surrounding Berlin’s hardening migration policy.

A ministry spokeswoman said the federal migration and refugee agency (BAMF) “will quickly take the necessary steps to bring back” the 20-year-old identified only as Nasibullah S. The young man had been flown to Afghanistan along with 68 other failed asylum seekers in early July despite an ongoing legal appeal against his deportation.

Germany’s hardline Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who has repeatedly challenged Chancellor Angela Merkel’s more liberal stance on migration issues, admitted that “appa­rently there were bureaucratic mistakes made at the BAMF” in its handling of the case. The BAMF has said that it believed Nasib­ullah S. filed his appeal against being returned to Afghanistan too late under German law and thus ordered his deportation.

Seehofer, who has spearheaded a drive to rid Germany of rejected asylum seekers, came under fire last week with a quip about the deportation flight with 69 Afghans on board falling on his 69th birthday. One of the other returnees, a 23-year-old man, committed suicide the day after Seehofer’s press conference and outraged opposition politicians called for the minister’s immediate resignation.

More Afghans are likely to be deported after Merkel’s shaky three-party coalition agreed this month on a tougher migration policy that will reduce the number of asylum seekers in the country.

Published in Dawn, July 19th, 2018