The outrage of the opposition in the Hessian state parliament in Wiesbaden knew no bounds.

"Human dignity is being broken," complained Social Democrat MP Nadine Gersberg.

Prime Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) fished with "unspeakable statements" on the right-hand side, scolded the parliamentary group leader of the left, Elisabeth Kula (Die Linke).

Ewald Hetrodt

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung in Wiesbaden.

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And Stefan Naas, the top candidate of the FDP in the state elections, did not want to miss the opportunity that the left-wing faction offered him with the application for a current hour.

He accused the head of government of adopting old slogans from CSU politicians.

"We need a successful repatriation offensive," was the sentence that Rhein had expressed in an interview with the "Frankfurter Rundschau".

Last year there were more than 85,000 unauthorized border crossings into Germany.

You have to react to that, according to the Union politician.

Without mentioning the name of the Hessian SPD state leader Nancy Faeser, Rhein added: "The key lies with the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which has to implement repatriation and secure the borders."

Of course, at that moment, Rhein was thinking that the Minister of the Interior will most likely challenge him in the state elections.

And it was precisely this connection that prompted the Social Democrat Gersberg to accuse the Union politician of “succinctly used populist slogans” that endangered the cohesion of society.

The reason that Rhein registered the verbal attacks of the competition in a completely relaxed manner was only to become apparent later.

First, the AfD MP Volker Richter suspected that the Prime Minister had probably taken a look at the latest motions of the parliamentary group from the right edge of the state parliament.

The speaker shed crocodile tears as he repeatedly regretted that the "bourgeois-conservative forces" in the country had allowed themselves to be split.

Kula dealt with the relationship between the two coalition partners.

"The silence of the Greens on the Prime Minister's demands is remarkable," she said.

For the eco-party, MP Marcus Bocklet expressly warned “all sides” not to carry out the discussion on the backs of vulnerable people.

But then he confessed to the position of the black coalition partner.

He took up Kula's statement that the recognition rate for asylum seekers in Germany is around 72 percent.

This means that at the end of the multi-stage process, there are many refugees who have no right to stay and are obliged to leave the country.

"Then you have to lead them back, too," said Bocklet.

Naas also advocated deportations as a "last resort", but accused the CDU politician of now demanding measures that the interior ministers of the Union had not taken for 16 years during the Merkel era.

It was left to the Hessian Minister of the Interior, Peter Beuth (CDU), to enlighten the opposition in detail at the end of the debate about the origin of the formulation used by Rhein.

The term, which was branded in the debate as an expression of populism and contempt for human beings, comes from the coalition agreement of the traffic light government formed by the SPD, Greens and FDP in Berlin.

"Not everyone who comes to us can stay," it says.

"We are launching a repatriation offensive to implement departures more consistently, in particular the deportation of criminals and those who are dangerous." The federal government will "support the states more in the future".

Beuth said with relish that he could not see that it was reprehensible when the Prime Minister of Hesse reminded the federal government of a responsibility that it had expressly assumed.

"Look at your own coalition agreement," he called out, looking around the plenary hall.

The relevant passage in the coalition agreement decided by their parties at the federal level was obviously new to the state politicians from the SPD, Greens and FDP.

So the shots they fired backfired.