Donald Trump’s campaign told Newsweek on Monday that Germany’s new moves to tighten its borders, coming after a series of attacks allegedly carried out by migrants, showed “wide open borders” did not work.
Republican National Committee spokesperson Taylor Rogers was responding to the news that the European nation had started random checks at its borders with five other countries, following two knife attacks which left four dead and four injured.
Countries within the European Union have very limited border checks in place, allowing free movement between member states. Rogers said this type of policy was comparable to the United States’ current immigration system.
“Like the United States under dangerously liberal Kamala, the world is learning that wide open borders mixed with soft-on-crime policies is a recipe for criminals and terrorists to unleash rampant and violent crime in our communities,” Taylor Rogers, RNC spokesperson, said in a statement to Newsweek.
Inset: Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks during a campaign rally at The Expo at World Market Center Las Vegas on September 13, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Main: German police is seen at the German-French border on September 16, 2024 in Kehl, Germany. Germany is expanding its border checks to all of its border crossings in an effort to stop irregular immigration.
Justin Sullivan/Thomas Niedermueller/Getty Images
Trump has previously criticized the E.U., and specifically Germany, on its immigration controls, including in June 2018 after former German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out over the then-president’s controversial family-separation policy.
The bloc does allow temporary border checks to be reinstated, if necessary, with Germany blaming “irregular migration” as the main reason for instituting new border controls.
The extra security checks were introduced at Germany’s borders with Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Denmark. Measures were already in place on the crossings for Poland, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
In June, a knife attack attributed to an Afghan immigrant left a police officer dead and four other people wounded.
On Aug. 23, a man linked to Islamist extremism killed three people and wounded eight others in a stabbing rampage at a festival in Solingen.
A 26-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker who had evaded deportation from Germany to Bulgaria, was arrested shortly after the attack. Following the festival attack, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised to implement stricter knife laws and ramp up deportations of rejected asylum-seekers.
German police check people arriving from France at the German-French border on September 16, 2024 in Kehl, Germany. Germany is expanding its border checks to all of its border crossings today in an effort to stop irregular immigration. Immigrants arriving to seek asylum will be turned away with the directive to seek asylum in the country from which they are crossing.
Thomas Niedermueller/Getty Images
In the U.S., Trump and other members of the GOP have repeatedly made claims that there has been a wave of migrant crime, due to current border policies.
On paper, the U.S. has some of the strictest border controls in the world, but illegal crossings and asylum claims at the southwest border did surge after the COVID-19 pandemic. They have since eased, following measures introduced by President Joe Biden in June.
While there have been several reports of crimes carried out by illegal immigrants, who are often detained and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), experts have found that American citizens are more likely to commit violent crimes than immigrants.
As with Germany’s Scholz, Trump has promised to deport illegal migrants should he be elected in November.
