BERLIN (Reuters) – German ministers outlined plans on Tuesday to speed up the deportation of foreigners who commit crimes, responding to sexual attacks on women by migrants in Cologne which have deepened doubts about the country’s open-door refugee policy.

The assaults on New Year’s Eve, which are the subject of an ongoing investigation, have emboldened right-wing groups and unsettled members of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party, raising pressure on her to crack down forcefully on migrants who commit crimes.

Under plans unveiled by conservative Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere and Social Democrat (SPD) Justice Minister Heiko Maas, foreigners who are found guilty of committing physical and sexual assaults, resisting police or damaging property, could be deported.

Under current law, most of these crimes carry probationary sentences and do not trigger expulsion.

Merkel welcomed the agreement between the two ministers who represent different parties in her right-left coalition.

“We must make sure the law can take effect as soon as possible. First we have to think how to get the parliamentary process going as quickly as possible,” conservative Merkel said.

On Monday night, more than 200 masked right-wing supporters, carrying placards with racist overtones, went on a rampage in the eastern city of Leipzig, throwing fireworks, breaking windows and vandalizing buildings, police said.

That took place at the same time as roughly 2,000 anti-Muslim protesters marched peacefully in the city center and chanted “Merkel must go”. They held placards showing the chancellor in a Muslim veil and reading “Merkel, take your Muslims with you and get lost”.

More than 600 women have complained of being attacked on New Years Eve in Cologne and other German cities. The complaints range from sexual molestation to theft and police have said their investigations are focused on illegal migrants from north Africa as well as asylum seekers.

In response, Michael Grosse-Broemer, parliamentary whip for Merkel’s conservatives, called on Tuesday for steps to limit immigration from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia by classifying them as “safe countries”.

Germany took the same step for western Balkan countries last year and has seen a sharp drop in arrivals from there since then.

The head of Cologne police was dismissed last week for his handling of the attacks and the SPD interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia Ralf Jaeger is also under fire from political foes.

With more migrants arriving in Europe’s biggest economy, Merkel is under growing pressure to toughen her line on refugees. However, her coalition parties are at odds on a range of other steps.

An INSA poll in Bild daily put support for Merkel’s conservative bloc down 1 point at 35 percent with the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has strongly criticized Merkel’s refugee policies, up 2 points at 11.5 percent.

INSA polls put the conservatives a couple percentage points lower and AfD higher than the other leading polling institutes.

Social tensions have already bubbled to the surface with almost daily attacks on refugee shelters.

On Monday evening, the group of right-wingers who vandalized part of Leipzig held a placard reading “Leipzig bleibt Helle”, or “Leipzig stays light”, an apparent reference to the skin color of residents.

(Editing by Noah Barkin and Raissa Kasolowsky)

BERLIN (Reuters) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel faced growing pressure to harden her line on refugees on Monday as the first extensive police report on New Year’s Eve violence in Cologne documented rampant sexual assaults on women by gangs of young migrant men.

Cologne police said at least 11 foreigners, including Pakistanis, Guineans and Syrians, had been injured on Sunday evening in attacks by hooligans bent on revenge for the assaults in the western city.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere condemned those attacks and warned against a broader backlash against refugees following the events in Cologne, which have deepened scepticism towards Merkel’s policy of welcoming migrants.

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party seized on the latest developments to attack the chancellor while members of her own conservative party warned that integrating the hundreds of thousands of migrants who arrived last year would fail if the influx were not stopped immediately.

“If the influx continues as it has, then integration can’t work,” said Carsten Linnemann, a lawmaker in Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU). “If we get another 800,000 or a million people arriving this year, then we won’t be able to do this,” he added, playing on Merkel’s optimistic “we can do this” mantra.

Speaking on Monday evening, Merkel said Europe was “vulnerable” because it was not yet in control of the situation as it would like to be.

In the eastern city of Leipzig, well over 2,000 anti-Muslim LEGIDA protestors took to the streets, their ranks swelled by anger over the Cologne attacks. They yelled “Merkel needs to go!” and one carried a sign featuring Merkel wearing a hijab and the words: ‘Merkel, take your Muslims with you and get lost’.

A police spokeswoman said there was a roughly equal number of counter-demonstrators.

A report from the Interior Ministry in North Rhine-Wesphalia (NRW) state, where Cologne lies, said 516 criminal complaints had been registered, 237 of which were of a sexual nature.

A separate report from the Cologne police gave graphic descriptions of the crimes, listing case after case of women surrounded by gangs of men who put their hands in the victims’ pants and skirts, grabbed them between the legs, on the buttocks and the breasts, often while stealing their wallets and cell phones.

A total of 19 suspects have been identified, all foreigners.

NRW Interior Minister Ralf Jaeger spoke of “serious failures” by the police, who were significantly outnumbered but never called for reinforcements.

He also criticized them for refusing to communicate in the days after New Year’s Eve that the vast majority of the perpetrators were people with migration backgrounds, blaming this on misguided “political correctness”.

“More than 1,000 Arab and North African men gathered on New Year’s Eve near Cologne cathedral and the main train station. Among them were many refugees that came to Germany in the past months,” Jaeger told a special parliamentary committee in NRW.

“After alcohol and drug excesses came the excesses of violence, peaking with people who carried out fantasies of sexual power.”

A survey conducted by polling group Forsa for RTL television showed 60 percent of respondents saw no reason to change their attitude towards foreigners after the assaults. About 37 percent said they viewed foreigners more critically.

In Leipzig, Olaf Schwermer, one of the LEGIDA protestors, said he was concerned about more attacks if borders were not closed and migrants not deported: “What happened in Cologne only gave us a taste of what’s about to come,” he said.

Elsewhere in the city around 250 right-wingers, probably soccer hooligans, were detained after they set bins on fire, damaged property and set off fireworks, a police spokeswoman said.

DANGEROUS

Jaeger said the sexual assaults had come mainly from North Africans who had traveled to Cologne from other cities, but he too warned against a broader backlash against migrants.

“To label certain groups, to stigmatize them as sexual criminals, would not only be wrong, it would be dangerous,” he said. “Those people who make a direct link between immigration and violence are playing into the hands of right-wing extremists.”

Police officer Norbert Wagner told a news conference that rocker and hooligan gangs had published an appeal on the Internet on Sunday to join them in “violence-free strolls” through Cologne, when in fact they were prowling for foreigners.

Among the victims were six Pakistanis, three Guineans and two Syrians. Witnesses had also seen another man of African origin being attacked, but his identity was unclear because he had not contacted authorities, Wagner said.

No arrests have been made. Local police are beefing up their presence in downtown Cologne in the coming days

The Cologne police force has also set up a 100-strong team to investigate the New Year’s Eve attacks and survey exchanges on social media in the run-up to the night.

Merkel has repeatedly resisted pressure to introduce a cap on the number of migrants entering Germany, arguing this would mean shutting the borders, a step that would doom Europe’s Schengen free-travel zone.

She has talked tougher in recent months, vowing in December to “measurably reduce” arrivals and promising at the weekend to give authorities more powers to crack down on migrants who commit crimes, including deporting them.

But her opponents have been swift to blame her for the events in Cologne.

“Anyone who opens the borders wide must know that they are bringing Tahrir Square to Germany,” leading AfD politician Dirk Driesang said, referring to the square in Cairo that was the scene of protests and sexual assaults in 2011.

(Additional reporting by Tina Bellon in Leipzig, Matthias Inverardi in Duesseldorf and Claudia Doerries in Berlin; Writing by Noah Barkin; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

BERLIN (Reuters) – Nearly two dozen asylum seekers are among those suspected of involvement in mass assaults and muggings on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, officials said on Friday, intensifying a debate about Germany’s welcome for hundreds of thousands of migrants.

Some 121 women are reported to have been robbed, threatened or sexually molested by gangs of men of foreign descent as revelers partied near the city’s twin-spired Gothic cathedral.

The assaults have shocked many Germans and led to calls for tougher laws to punish migrants who commit crimes. On Friday, Cologne police chief Wolfgang Albers, who had been heavily criticism for his handling of the violence and police communications afterwards, was dismissed.

Some 1.1 million migrants arrived in Germany last year, far more than in any other European country, most of them fleeing war or deprivation in the Middle East.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has resisted domestic pressure to introduce a formal cap on the numbers, repeating her “We can do this” mantra to Germans. But the Cologne attacks have deepened scepticism among the population.

Cologne police said on Friday that they had arrested two males aged 16 and 23 with “North African roots” suspected of involvement in the assaults.

SUSPECTS IDENTIFIED

Separately, German federal police said they had identified 32 people who were suspected of playing a role in the violence, 22 of whom were in the process of seeking asylum in Germany.

The federal police documented 76 criminal acts, most them involving some form of theft, and seven linked to sexual molestation.

Of the 32 suspects, nine were Algerian, eight Moroccan, five Iranian, and four Syrian. Three German citizens, an Iraqi, a Serb and a U.S. citizen were also identified.

Interior Ministry spokesman Tobias Plate did not say if any of the suspects had been charged. “The investigations are ongoing,” he said.

Federal police were on duty inside Cologne’s main train station, while state police were deployed outside, near the cathedral, where most of the assaults appear to have taken place. So the numbers probably represent only a portion of the crimes that took place.

Amateur videos from the night show groups of young men jumping around chaotically, shooting fireworks into the crowd and pushing bystanders. A full police report on the evening is due in the coming days.

In response to the assaults, Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) have called for tougher penalties against offending asylum-seekers.

“WHY SHOULD GERMANS PAY?”

A draft paper seen by Reuters ahead of a meeting of the party leadership in Mainz said migrants who have been sentenced to prison or probation should be ineligible for asylum.

“Why should German taxpayers pay to imprison foreign criminals?” said Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, leader of the Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel’s coalition partner.

“The threat of having to spend time behind bars in their home country is far more of a deterrent than a prison sentence in Germany.”

The CDU paper calls for lower barriers to the deportation of criminal asylum seekers, increased video surveillance, and the creation of a new criminal offense of physical assault.

The attacks have raised doubts over whether Germany, which has a large Turkish Muslim community dating from an influx of workers in the 1960s and 70s, can successfully integrate the latest wave despite Merkel’s attempts at reassurance.

“There are many refugees that are happy to have survived, to have made it here, and who are looking for jobs. These people who can contribute to our country are welcome,” Peter Tauber, general secretary of Merkel’s party, told Deutschlandfunk radio.

“But clearly there are also some who haven’t understood what kind of opportunity they’ve been given.”

Julia Kloeckner, leader of the CDU in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and seen as a possible successor to Merkel, told ZDF television the attacks had been a wake-up call for Germany.

“I think we really need to take off the blinkers,” she said.

(Reporting by Andreas Rinke, Caroline Copley, Paul Carrel and Noah Barkin; Editing by Kevin Liffey)