Poland. During the day, 124 migrants tried to cross the Polish-Belarusian border

It should be noted that among them were citizens of Ethiopia, Somalia, and India.

14 migrants crossed the border rivers on the guarded section of the border in Białowieża. Five Cameroonian citizens who crossed the Forest Truth and a Sudanese who crossed the Pshevloka River were detained. The remaining eight migrants returned to Belarus.

The Border Service of the Republic of Poland also informed that 34.2 thousand people were registered yesterday to leave Ukraine to Poland and 36.7 thousand people from Poland to Ukraine.

In total, since the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion, more than 14.7 million people have crossed the border from Ukraine to Poland, and 13.3 million have crossed the border in the opposite direction.

Situation on the Polish-Belarusian border

On August 4, 2021, Polish border guards and police detained 62 irregular migrants who entered Poland from Belarus. 50 citizens of Iraq, 11 citizens of Iran and 1 citizen of Cameroon were detained for illegally crossing the Polish-Belarusian border. The law enforcement officers also detained a Ukrainian who tried to “pick up” several foreigners.

On August 24, 2021, the Minister of National Defense Mariusz Błaszczak announced that Poland plans to build a 2.5-meter fence on the border with Belarus.

At the end of January 2022, Poland started building a fence on the border with Belarus. It was then announced that a 186-kilometer wall would be built along the border to stop the flow of migrants. The new barrier had a total length of 186 km and a height of 5.5 m.

In October last year, Poland completed the construction of a 187 km long wall on the border with Belarus. The height of the added “wall” is 5.5 m. The fence is made of 4.5 m high steel panels with barbed wire on top.

On May 1, the spokeswoman for the Polish Border Guard, Anna Michalska, informed that the installation of an electronic barrier on the border with Belarus is being completed in the country. According to the spokeswoman, 206 km of electric fences have already been installed, 150 m remain to be completed, but the weather conditions make it impossible.

On August 12, 2023, 160 illegal migrants from Asian and African countries tried to cross the Polish border from Belarus.

How many people really cross the Polish-Belarusian border?

• The migration route from Belarus to Western Europe has been operating for two years. So it would be good to know how many people manage to pass it. Michalska provided data on two phenomena: the number of "attempts to cross the border" and "detentions/disclosures of people who crossed or tried to cross the border".
• The number of "border crossing attempts" is the sum of situations in which the services noticed that someone is trying to cross the border or has already crossed it. If a group of 20 tries to cross the border on Tuesday, the Border Guard will consider it “20 attempts”. When 7 people join the same group and retry the pass on Friday, the SG will record another “27 attempts”. Since many people make attempts to cross several, a dozen or even several dozen times, and the services do not register their data, the same people are counted many times. What is “20 attempts” in the statistics may therefore be one Syrian push-backed for several weeks.
• The number of “stops” refers to people who crossed the border and were not pushed back. They ended up in centers for foreigners – mostly guarded, although there were exceptions.