The chancellor stressed that forceful deportations increase the willingness of migrants to return voluntarily, in which case the affected individuals get some benefits.
"If governments refuse to forcibly return them [migrants], then, of course, everyone says ‘I do not want to voluntarily’," Merkel stressed as quoted by Salzburger Nachrichten on Friday.
The European Union is currently struggling to manage a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people leaving conflict-torn countries in the Middle East and North Africa to escape violence and poverty and seeking asylum in Europe.
Last year, more than one million migrants and asylum seekers arrived in Germany.
According to data from the German Interior Ministry, over 20,000 migrants had left the country by October 2016.
