With New Year's Eve celebrations across Europe once again marred by sex assaults and rioting by Muslim immigrants amid heightened terror warnings, many Europeans are arming themselves and some of their leaders are urging drastic action.

German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere called for putting his country's police and intelligence services under the authority of a single national police force and giving the federal government responsibility for deporting rejected asylum-seekers, the Telegraph of London reported.

The suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack, Anis Amri, was a rejected asylum seeker. DeMaiziere proposes new “federal exit centers” that would be set up near airports to hold deportees until they could be expelled.

In Italy, the leader of the right-wing Lega Nord party, Matteo Salvini, said Islam is the main problem confronting Europe, contending it is incompatible with European values.

TRENDING: Americans against unconstitutional mask mandates

He said the Berlin Christmas market attack Dec. 19 in which 12 people were killed and 49 injured was a direct result of not heeding the "warning" of the New Year's Eve sex attacks on Cologne one year ago.

“We are under attack and must decisively kick out those people who do not have a legal claim to residence here," he said. “If you want to live in peace, you have to prepare for war.”

The Obama administration's betrayal is exposed in "See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government's Submission to Jihad," by former DHS officer Philip Haney and WND Editor Art Moore

In Dortmund, Germany, on New Year's Eve, more than two-dozen people were injured when a mob of more than 1,000 men chanted "Allahu Akhbar," launched fireworks at police and set fire to the roof of Germany’s oldest church, St. Reinolds.

In Hamburg, 14 women were the victims of sex attacks. Police said the suspected attackers, including migrants, grabbed their victim’s crotches. Ten people have been arrested in connection with the sexual assaults.

Officers said three Syrians, three Iraqis, two Afghans, one Eritrean and one German were arrested in connection with the assaults. Firefighters and police were called out to more than 2,000 incidents during the celebrations.

Police in the Bavarian town of Augsburg launched investigations into several sex attacks on New Year’s Eve. Afghan nationals, aged 19, 21 and 37 were accused of repeatedly groping two 18-year-old girls.

Racial profiling?

In Cologne, an attempt by police to avoid the mass rape and grope attacks by North African migrants one year ago brought charges of "racial profiling." The spokesman for the German Police union, Ernst Walter, defended the close eye on migrants.

"The real question is how can we politically prevent even the existence of such serious North African criminals, and that is really what we should think about," he said in an interview Monday with the private German TV channel Phoenix.

"In my opinion, and in the opinion of the German Police union, these people should be deported," Walter continued, according to a translation.

"If they are serious criminals and they can't be deported, then they belong behind bars under lock and key and not on the streets of the Federal Republic of Germany."

More 1,000 police officers were on the streets of Cologne Dec. 31 after more than 1,000 women reported incidents, including robbery and sexual assaults on New Year's Eve one year ago.

About 650 people, mostly North Africans, were detained for identity checks at this year's celebration.

Nevertheless, authorities said more than 150 crimes had been reported in the celebration in Cologne Sunday night and Monday morning, including almost a dozen assaults or insults of a sexual nature.

Germany's fundamental change

A caller to a British radio show who had just returned from the New Year's Eve celebrations in Germany defended German police against the racial-profiling charge, insisting “outsiders” could not understand the overwhelming fear the German people have felt amid the migrant crisis.

The caller, noting he was married to a German, told the host of the show on the London station LBC, former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, the problem is "that people don’t appreciate outside of Germany is what’s going on there on a daily, on an hourly, basis."

“Public swimming pools, the sex offenses that are taking place in universities and schools; the people of Germany are currently terrified of what’s going on," he said.

He said Germany had changed fundamentally after Chancellor Angela Merkel allowed 1.1 million migrants to enter the country without vetting.

“They were once a very passive left-wing country, as you well know, but that is beginning to change, and it’s beginning to change in a way that I’ve never seen before," the caller said.

“The German government are currently going through an insurance package for the population, especially in places like Bavaria, I was down there skiing at the beginning of the year, the demographic of the country has changed beyond recognition.

"I feel quite vulnerable in the streets, the whole country has changed.”

He said the police in Cologne did the right thing.

“Damn right they did, because people here are not aware of what’s going on there. Especially women are terrified, and if the police don’t do this then there is no hope.”

After the Cologne sex attacks last year, major German cities all reported an influx of requests for weapons permits, Breitbart reported.

Cologne police estimated that they received at least 304 applications within just two weeks of the mass sexual assaults, compared to 408 applications over the entire year of 2015.

In Belgium, applications for firearms permits have skyrocketed, Breitbart reported, with applications in one major province more than doubling in just five years. Permits in Belgium are issued only after the authorities conduct a “morality investigation” followed by a theoretical and practical test.

Spurred to action

After largely shaking their heads "in passive, ineffectual dismay over the Salafist mosques in their communities," the recent rash of terror attacks and concern about increased radicalization among European Muslim youth have spurred officials into action, the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported.

In November, Germany outlawed the Salafist group True Religion, calling it a "collecting pool" for jihadists.

IPT noted that with all the focus on ISIS, it's the local mosques, largely backed by the Saudis, that always has been the greatest threat to Europe and Western culture in terms of terrorism and sociopolitical influence.

Counter-terrorism experts and government officials, IPT said, have increasingly "been forced to acknowledge that 'bombing the hell out of ISIS,' as the U.S. president-elect has sworn to do, won't be enough to solve the problem."

But if addressing the migrant crisis is part of the solution, authorities will need to step up their game.

In Switzerland, more than 8,000 migrants disappeared in 2016 after abandoning the asylum procedures without informing authorities, RT.com reported.

It represents a 40 percent increase over last year.

Martin Reichlin, a spokesman for the Migration Ministry, said the missing migrants came mainly came from Africa with the majority coming from Eritrea (801), Gambia (792), Nigeria (716), Guinea (508), Algeria (504) and Somalia (494).

Jewish community's 'severe trauma'

Meanwhile, Jewish Press columnist Isi Leibler wrote the day after Christmas that Jewish communities around the world, but particularly in Europe, are "suffering severe trauma as they experience erosion of the acceptance and security they enjoyed over the past half century."

"Whether it be Paris, Johannesburg, New York, Melbourne or any city with a Jewish community, the anti-Semitism expressed as feverish hatred of the Jewish state — incubated over the past decade by a witches’ brew of Muslim, far-left and traditional anti-Semitism — is again transforming many Jews into pariahs," Leibler wrote.

The Obama administration's betrayal is exposed in "See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government's Submission to Jihad," by former DHS officer Philip Haney and WND Editor Art Moore