In January, the Bavarian arm of the AfD said it would put forward plans in regional parliament for a police unit focused on deporting immigrants who have entered the country illegally, as part of an array of steps to curb unauthorized immigration, according to an internal party document reported by German media.
“In addition to state-run deportation flights, we are calling for the creation of an asylum, investigation, and deportation unit within the Bavarian police,” the AfD parliamentary group leader Katrin Ebner-Steiner said. The Bavarian Police Union said there is no legal basis for a deportation unit.
Belgium’s Vlaams Belang plans to submit a proposal for a similar police unit in the coming days. While MP Francesca Van Belleghem rejected the comparison with ICE because, she said, the Belgian unit would remain part of the existing police and not a separate federal agency, the details of the plan suggest otherwise: Specialized officers in every police zone, full units in major cities and border areas, and agents actively hunting unauthorized immigrants.
“Instead of only registering illegal immigrants when they are caught by chance, the unit would actively search for persons without legal status,” Van Belleghem told POLITICO, adding: “We do not allow our national proposals to be dictated by the international context.”
In France, meanwhile, far-right firebrand and Reconquête party founder Éric Zemmour did not rule out the idea when asked in a TV interview whether France should have a police force similar to ICE. “It would need to be adapted to France and to French institutions. But we’ll have to be ruthless,” Zemmour told BFMTV.
Political scientist Laura Jacobs from the University of Antwerp said that some far-right parties are careful and avoid association with Trump as it could hurt their image, but “are indeed referring to [a] similar police force.”