Image Credit: picture alliance / Contributor / Getty 
The countries neighboring Germany, such as Poland and the Netherlands, have a growing problem on their hand: the German federal police keep dumping illegal migrants in their territory, often without coordinating with local authorities and conducting the operations during the dead of the night.
The story has become one of the major talking points in Poland in recent weeks, with the biggest concern being that PM Donald Tusk, the head of the country’s liberal coalition, has taken no action and is unlikely to either, leaving residents to take action themselves by forming volunteer groups to patrol the border.
“The situation is dire,” said conservative president-elect Karol Nawrocki, who is set to take office next month. “I will not remain indifferent to it after August 6th. I will certainly convene the Cabinet Council. I will want to learn all the statistical data regarding illegal migrants,” he said, adding that outgoing president Andrzej Duda may even have to step in sooner.
According to Polish residents living close to the German border, the phenomenon has been going on for at least six months, but has intensified since the new German government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz took power. In recent weeks, barely a day has passed without at least one incident being reported.
In response, volunteers founded the ‘Border Defense Movement’—a similar citizens’ initiative that’s picking up pace in the Netherlands—which aims to patrol the German border to prevent both illegal entries and the allegedly unlawful deportation operations of the German police.
Last week, a group of some 30 volunteers attempted to prevent one such incident in the border town of Lubieszyn, only for two of them to be temporarily detained by the German police on Polish territory. This understandably angered the residents, and by the evening, over a hundred new supporters showed up.
🇵🇱 Two days ago, 30 Poles stood at the Polish-German border at Lubieszyn vowing to tackle illegal immigration. Two were temporarily detained by German police.
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) June 27, 2025
They vowed to be back each day and that "soon there will be hundreds of us."
This was the scene this evening. pic.twitter.com/d2cekeH5Kw
Meanwhile, the Tusk government continues to dismiss the concerns as “hysteria” stoked by right-wing media. Nawrocki categorically rejects this assumption.
“This is not hysteria,” the President-elect underlined, adding that locals raised the issue with him repeatedly during the campaign. “If citizens from the Border Defense Movement are making efforts to counteract illegal migration …, it means that the situation is not under the control of the state authorities today,” he said.
Nawrocki then added that the Tusk government is fully responsible for letting the situation get out of hand, and that decisive action must be taken at the highest political level. “There is no room for diplomacy here. I appeal to the Prime Minister … that this situation must be resolved.”
Of course, the Germans claim that the practice is entirely within their right under the Dublin Regulation and that they only expel migrants who illegally entered the country from Poland. However, the EU laws don’t permit deportations to other member states without the consent of the other country, and there’s no way to prove whether the migrants truly came from Poland in the first place.
