Monday, October 4th, 2021
New high on the weekend
More migrants come to Germany via Poland
251 people illegally crossed the German-Polish border last weekend. A new high according to the federal police. The route led from Belarus via Lithuania and Poland.
According to the Federal Police, 251 unauthorized border crossings were found at the German-Polish border in Brandenburg last weekend. That is a new high for weekends, said the federal police. The people came from Belarus via Lithuania and Poland.
Mostly it was larger groups of people who entered illegally, it said. On Friday, federal police officers checked a group of twelve Iraqis in the village of Falkenhagen (Mark) who could not show any residence permits, following a witness evidence. A 20-year-old pregnant woman was taken to hospital for medical treatment. A few hours later, a group of 31 was discovered: 29 Iraqis and 2 Syrians.
On Saturday, the federal police identified 15 Iraqi nationals near the district court after a witness in Frankfurt (Oder) reported. They could not produce any documents that would have legalized their stay. After the police measures were completed, they were all handed over to the state’s central reception facility in Eisenhüttenstadt. Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Michael Stübgen from the CDU wants to find out more about the current situation in Eisenhüttenstadt on Wednesday.
It was only on Friday that the Federal Police Directorate in Berlin reported an increasing number of migrants on the German-Polish border. By the end of September, forces in the border area between Brandenburg and Poland took a total of 1,556 unauthorized people into custody.
Federal police use cavalry squadron
According to the information, the federal police are using a cavalry squadron to supplement search measures more effectively. It can also penetrate into inaccessible areas of the terrain. Governments of several EU countries, including Poland, are accusing the Belarusian ruler, Alexander Lukashenko, of bringing refugees from crisis regions to the EU’s external border in an organized manner.
Poland also accuses the neighboring country of repeatedly participating in “provocations” such as throwing objects at the Polish border guards. Of the Polish border guards tweeted photos of a dummy bomb that had been deposited at the border. At the same time, the chairman of the Polish Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, called for “medical and humanitarian aid” for migrants.
Lukashenko announced at the end of May that his country would no longer prevent migrants from continuing to travel to the EU – in response to tightened Western sanctions. According to earlier information, Lithuania has now started building a 508-kilometer fence on its border with Belarus. Work is also underway to build a fence in neighboring Latvia.
Poland is reporting more and more migrants from Belarus
In September, the Polish authorities registered almost 9,000 attempts to illegally cross the border from Belarus. That is around twice as many as in August, reported the Internet portal TVN24.pl, citing the Ministry of the Interior in Warsaw. On the same day, the Polish border guard reported on its official Twitter page that 434 illegal attempts to cross the border had been registered on Sunday alone. 16 Iraqi citizens and 12 alleged smugglers from different countries were arrested, all other people were turned back from the border.
In Poland, a state of emergency has been in effect in numerous municipalities on the border with Belarus since the beginning of September. With this measure, the Polish government wants to prevent migrants from receiving support from the Polish side when crossing the border. The state of emergency was initially imposed for a month. On October 1st, President Andrzej Duda signed an extension approved by Parliament for a further 60 days.