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Friedrich Merz, the front-runner in the race to become German chancellor, plans to introduce an immigration bill to impose “almost permanent” border controls in the wake of a fatal knife attack in the south of the country.

The CDU leader, who is expected to win the general election on February 23, also pledged to ban entry to asylum seekers and speed up deportations. He said on Friday that his party plans to put the measures to a vote in Parliament as soon as next week.

“Germany should take advantage of its right to the primacy of national law,” the conservative leader said.

The planned measures respond to growing public protests following the killing on Wednesday of a two-year-old player and an adult by an Afghan asylum seeker in the Bavarian town of Aschaffenberg. Frustration over Berlin’s inability to take a tougher approach on irregular migration has led to increased support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD).

The attack in the city, 40 kilometers southeast of Frankfurt, comes a month after a Saudi Arab doctor ran into a Christmas market in the eastern city. MagdeburgSix were killed and hundreds injured. In August, a Syrian national stabbed three people and injured eight others in the western city of Solingen. The terrorist group ISIS claimed responsibility for the Solingen attack.

The AFD seized on the attacks to justify its calls Mass deportation Of immigrants. The party is expected to finish second with about 20 percent of the vote, according to exit polls. Wednesday, AFD leader Alice Wedel She published a letter urging Merz’s cooperation in Parliament on immigration.

Owe John, a political scientist, said Merz was trying to draw a line under the era of the Convention and CLA Chancellor

“But it is difficult to see how any party can benefit from the current immigration debate except the AFD,” John said.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose Social Democratic Party trails in third place at the polls, sought to shift blame for the latest attack on Markus Söder, Bavaria’s conservative president. Söder is the leader of the Christian Social Union, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, and is campaigning with Merz.

The suspect in Wednesday’s attack, who was arrested, is a 28-year-old Afghan national whose asylum application was rejected in 2023 and should have been deported to Bulgaria, where he entered the European Union. He had known psychiatric problems and told authorities he would leave Germany voluntarily a month ago, according to Bavarian authorities.

After the Solingen attack, Schulz’s coalition presented Temporary controls Along all its territorial borders, the move, he said, “was compatible with European law.”

But Schulz has been criticized for failing to solve the problem. “Blah-Blah Chancellor,” read the headline on the front page of Bild, Germany’s largest tabloid, on Friday.

“It’s a blame game at the moment,” said Henning Meyer, a professor of public policy at the University of Tübingen. “People rightly feel that the government is not in control, but it is a systemic management problem.”

Mayer added: “All the attackers were known and some have been identified as potential threats. There is a problem with the flow of information between the authorities.”

Several agencies received warnings about the Magdeburg attacker, a refugee who expressed support for the AFD and had known psychiatric issues.

Merz’s party could secure a parliamentary majority for his immigration proposals with support from the Liberals, the AfD and the Leftwinger Sahra Wagenknecht and without support from the SPD and Greens. Both coalition parties may face backlash if they decide to withhold or reject the measures.

Green MP Konstantin von Notz warned that the proposals were “incompatible with neither the Constitution nor European law… Merz is following in the footsteps of Donald Trump.”

Professor Mayer said Merz risked losing support if the attacks continued.

He said: “Mears wants to make border controls semi-permanent, but the risk is that he goes too far and there is another attack.” “Illegal immigrants don’t tend to be the ones lining up at border crossings and they have a big green border.”