German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said illegal immigration into Germany “must be reduced” after a Syrian asylum seeker was charged with killing three people in an attack in the western German city of Solingen last week.
“This is terrorism. It's terrorism against all of us,” Scholz said during a visit to Solingen on Monday.
Scholz also said his government would “do everything we can to repatriate and expel those who cannot and should not remain in Germany”, and would bring forward deportations if necessary.
He also promised to strengthen weapons ownership laws “very quickly.”
As soon as authorities confirmed that the suspect in Friday's deadly stabbing was a Syrian refugee, the political fallout from the tragedy began to reverberate across Germany.
The attacker, identified as 26-year-old Issa al-H., is suspected of having ties to the terrorist group Islamic State.
The already heated debate over immigration has become even more intense.
The day after the attacks, conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz called for a halt to accepting refugees from Syria and Afghanistan and called for control of all Germany's borders.
Alice Weidel, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), goes even further and wants to stop all migration altogether.
Experts say such proposals are unworkable and incompatible with German and EU law.
Chancellor Scholz's ruling center-left SPD party says Germany is committed to upholding its legal and humanitarian commitments to help people fleeing persecution.
But his government has pledged to deport migrants who have committed serious crimes and those whose asylum claims have been rejected.
The suspect in the Solingen attack came to Germany in 2022 as a Syrian refugee. Syrians are usually more likely to be granted asylum in Germany.
But his application was rejected and he was ordered to be deported to Bulgaria because he had already registered for asylum. Officials say they couldn't find him when they tried to deport him and he remained in Germany.
Now there is a debate over who is responsible for the failure.
Germany does not usually deport people to unsafe countries or war zones like Syria or Afghanistan because it has to negotiate with the Taliban government. But there are calls to change that.
Germany has been embroiled in a contentious debate over immigration for years. Local governments say they are short on money. There are also calls to speed up application processes and allow refugees to work more quickly, which some say will help them integrate into German society.
As Germany takes in a large number of refugees, the country is coping well overall, and the number of refugees appears to be decreasing this year.
However, Germany typically accepts hundreds of thousands of refugees each year.
In 2023, more than 350,000 people applied for asylum. In addition, since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, about 1.2 million Ukrainians have arrived in Germany.
Compared to other countries that accept fewer refugees, terrorist attacks involving asylum seekers are rare in Germany.
The most recent major incident occurred in 2016, when an Islamic extremist drove a truck into a Berlin Christmas market, killing 12 people.
But this attack could have enormous political implications.
On Sunday, important local elections are held in East Germany's two largest states, Saxony and Thuringia.
The AfD, which hopes to do well and even win the most votes, is already using the attack as part of its campaign.
Hours after the stabbing incident, the AfD posted a video on social media captioned “Hoecke or Solingen,” referring to Thuringia regional leader Björn Hoecke.
