Merkel under pressure to tamp down on refugees

BERLIN, Jan. 16 (UPI) -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure to reverse Germany's "open borders" refugee policy.

After news of mass sexual assaults carried out by migrants in Cologne on New Years Eve, an ally to Merkel has threatened to sue her to restore "orderly conditions" at Germany's borders.

"In the next 14 days, we will ask the federal government in writing, re-establish the borders legally orderly conditions," Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer told Spiegel magazine on Saturday. "If it does not, the government will continue to have no other choice than before the Federal Constitutional Court to complain."

Merkel had rejected Seehofer's previous requests to cap refugees at 200,000 per year. More than 1 million migrants have entered the country in the last year alone.

Earlier this week, NBC News reported Bavaria's Landshut district sent a bus full of more than 30 refugees to Merkel's office to protest resettlement efforts.

"The housing situation in our region is very difficult and there is a good chance these people will become homeless," Elmar Stoettner, a spokesman for the district said. All the migrants willingly chose to make the 340-mile trip.