Smuggling across the German-Polish border “goes beyond all limits”

By Michael Sauerbier

Monday morning, an hour and a half southeast of Berlin: The police stopped a van at the Cottbus-West motorway exit and found 24 Syrians in the hold. The Dutch driver (40) is on drugs. He had brought the illegal migrants across the Polish border near Forst (Lausitz) half an hour earlier. Cottbus police chief Oskar Vurgun: “We experience that here every day.”

The village of Roggosen halfway between Cottbus and the Forst border crossing. At the entrance to the town on Monday afternoon, riot police stopped every panel van and many cars and looked into the loading compartments and trunks. The route is popular with smugglers. It runs parallel to the highway, which is always monitored. At the checkpoint, Brandenburg’s Interior Minister Stübgen gives the latest refugee numbers.

“In the last two weeks we have apprehended 550 people who entered the country illegally,” reports Stübgen. “On average 50 every day and rising. The increase in illegal smuggling across the German-Polish border is beyond all scope.” Minister Faeser must set up stationary border controls “immediately,” demands the minister, “and not wait another four to six weeks for EU approval “.

Federal police union leader Lars Wendland (GdP) promptly contradicts Stübgen: “We are all working above the limit. We don’t know how the border controls will work. That just ties up staff that we don’t have.”

Border guards would not stop the flow of migrants, says Wendland: “We can only turn back refugees who are already registered in another country. That’s only ten percent here.”

Stübgen therefore wants a change to the asylum law in the Basic Law – with a kind of upper limit. The minister: “Germany can undertake to take in a certain number of refugees every year from hotspots where they are being persecuted. But if we have a lot of refugees from Ukraine, we won’t be able to accept anyone else for a year. Only when we have capacity again. This makes the system more predictable and means we can help those who are truly persecuted.”

Border residents have clear opinions

Site visit to Forst-Sacro, at the transition to Poland. “It can’t go on like this,” says Erika Britze (69). “Too many refugees are coming. We used to have guardhouses and it was better there. We need border controls again – and above all an upper limit for refugees!”

Sigrid Kretschmar (63) says: “I would have no problem with queues at the border crossing. Almost every day on the way to work I experience wild chases between smugglers and the police. The number of refugees is increasing. That must have an end!”

“Border controls today are better than tomorrow,” is also the opinion Elke Unger (80). “If you have a passport and a clear conscience, you can still get in. But not the many people who just want money. They would also be safe in Poland. Germany is not a gold mine! It is much more important to create order in the countries of origin.”

As the sun sets, patrol cars continue to watch at the highway exits, deep into the hinterland. “The smugglers often drop off their refugees on the rural outskirts of Cottbus,” says police chief Vurgun. “Residents then inform us.” Thousands of officers have been involved in checks and searches for weeks. Vurgun: “We miss our colleagues in other places.”

For Minister Stübgen the lesser evil. He warns of the dangers: “Refugees have to recoup the costs of their smuggling. This leads to a wave of crime. And Russia is increasingly trying to infiltrate Islamists and extremists. We need border controls now. Too much time has passed.”