Despite talking tough on illegal immigration in the run-up to 2017’s Federal elections, deportations of failed, terrorist, and criminal migrants fell last year, compared to 2016 levels.

The revelation that total deportations from Germany fell 1,400 to 23,966 in 2017 comes among surging electoral results for the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD), but widespread resistance to border control among the nation’s establishment.

Among those deported were 60 radicals, suspected by the German security services of being active in terrorism, reports Deutsche Welle.

Germany Flooded with Under-Age Migrants They Can't Deport https://t.co/CQ2QK04Z8B pic.twitter.com/ldG3EdbsfR — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 16, 2016

This fall comes in spite of Angela Merkel — whose continued position as chancellor remains under question after her party’s historic-low performance in the 2017 elections and the subsequent failure of coalition talks –contradicting her historic open arms approach to mass migration before the election to talk up deportations.

In a move which in retrospect may be seen as a cynical attempt to win votes, Merkel called for faster deportations of rejected asylum seekers, and especially Tunisians.

Failed Asylum Seekers Steal Police Sidearm, Take Hostages During Deportation Attempt https://t.co/hhcXqpcWDH — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) January 19, 2018

The change of policy came just months after failed Tunisian asylum seeker Anis Amri hijacked a lorry in Berlin and rammed a Christmas market, killing 12. After the attack, it was revealed the German government had missed several opportunities to deport Amri in the weeks leading up to the terror attack.

Yet as Merkel has attempted to woo her mainstream left-wing, pro mass-migration rivals the SPD into another grand coalition to allow her dominance over German politics to continue, her public remarks on mass migration have been less strident. Any attempts at deportations have been further hampered by a will to resist the policy by some at the top of German society.

Merkel Ally: Deportation of Quarter of a Million Failed Asylum Seekers ‘Almost Impossible’ https://t.co/KApU0ZeBV3 — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) August 13, 2017

In October 2017, Breitbart London reported on the significant costs to the German taxpayer of the migration system, as it was revealed a €2.4 million dedicated deportation centre at Hamburg airport had only removed a total of 86 migrants in 12 months. Deportation flights were further impacted by activist commercial pilots, who on 222 individual occasions in 2017 refused to fly aircraft containing migrants being sent home.

Over 1.3 million people are officially acknowledged by the government to have arrived as “refugees” in Germany since 2015.