Germany is facing a €125,000 bill to deport just three illegal African migrants who have been convicted of violent crimes.

A flight from Germany to the Republic of Guinea in West Africa should cost around €400 per person, but for the German government the cost to deport three African migrants convicted of violent crimes is proving to be vastly more costly. So far the North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) government has incurred a total bill of €124,607 in their attempt to deport the trio from Dusseldorf back to Africa, reports Die Welt.

According to the NRW government the costs are required because of the security involved with deporting the three Africans. The government, instead of putting the migrants on a commercial flight, decided instead to charter a plane which raised the costs of the deportation astronomically.

The government also argued that a regular commercial flight would have made it impossible to house the 13 police officers that they felt were needed to guard and keep the migrants under control, the doctor who would make sure the migrants arrived in a healthy state, and the 14-strong cabin crew to man the aircraft.

The case is the latest in a long line of grossly expensive deportations carried out by the German government. In January of this year a Bulgarian man cost the NRW government €20,000 to deport, in March a pair of Turks cost over €22,000, and the entire 3,100 migrants rejected for asylum in the past year have so far cost the region a massive €1.5 million.

The North Rhine-Westphalia region is not unique in having giant costs associated with deportations of failed asylum seekers and illegal migrants. In Bavaria €2.85 million were spent in 2015 alone deporting some 4,200 migrants.

The costs are mostly incurred by the police escorts, doctors and other functionaries needed to manage the deportation process along with often chartering private aircraft. Per person in Bavaria the costs work out to be around €55,000 per flight – by contrast a first class ticket on the luxurious Singapore Airlines costs $18,000 U.S. (or €16,000).

Along with the cost of deportations comes the fact that many migrants simply return to the country illegally, negating the entire process. This was the case of a North African drug dealer who had managed to be deported a total of ten times and still managed to come back to Germany.

The German Federal government projects that there will be the need for around 27,000 forced deportations in 2016 – up from last year’s total of 22,369. The figures for so-called ‘voluntary deportations’ are even higher with the government estimating 61,000 migrants could leave of their own accord and they have so far allocated over €10 million euros to help them leave.