During the celebrations of New Year’s Eve on December 31, several crimes of sexual assault, muggings, and more were reported upon young women across Germany, especially focused in Cologne.

For the attacks in Cologne, witnesses reported seeing firecrackers thrown into a large crowd in front of Cologne Central Station. Taking advantage of the confusion, a group of men slipped into the crowd and then surrounded women in groups of 30 to 40. These men allegedly sexually assaulted these women including groping to distract and terrorize victims while they were robbed of things like phones and wallets.

“We ran into this large group of men and tried to make our way through,” one of the attacked women said to the Cologne newspaper Express. “Suddenly I felt someone grab my rear end, then my breasts, and then I was being groped everywhere.”

Beyond the seemingly organized attacks in Cologne, complaints have been filed in the cities of Hamburg, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt and more; the crimes ranging from theft, to sexual assault and rape. In total, over 800 criminal complaints have been filed so far.

The police response has faced criticism. The Cologne police chief Wolfgang Albers has since been transferred to provisional retirement for his handling of the situation.

As of Jan. 12, there were 23 suspects for the crimes on New Year’s Eve and they have been described as “almost exclusively migrants” from Algerian, Moroccan and Arab descent by the police in Cologne. Some of these men had even applied for asylum, or the protection granted by a country to a political refugee. Due to the race of the attackers, a debate about Germany’s openness to refugees has begun as this year Germany has taken in over 1 million refugees, far more than any other European nation.

Specifically, Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and Time’s Person of the Year has come under fire due to her support of keeping Germany’s borders open. However, the Chancellor has condemned that attacks and stated that she will support faster deportation of those who are “serial offenders” of lesser crimes.

“This is in the interests of the citizens of Germany, but also in the interests of the great majority of the refugees who are here,” Merkel told party members in Mainz.

Most recently, the first arrest has been made on a 26 year old asylum seeker from Algeria for groping and robbery of a phone with many others under investigation.

On Monday the party of Chancellor Merkel, the Christian Democratic Union, decided that Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia should be designated safe countries, cutting their citizens’ chance of being granted asylum to almost none. The intention of this step is to slow arrivals and make deportations easier.