As bitter as the dispute over German migration policy is, almost everyone agrees on one point: criminal smugglers should be stopped. A huge task for the federal police.
The long journey ends for Ahmed and his companions on the edge of the Flora garden community in Forst. The young men wait quietly at the hedge of the allotment gardens until federal police pat them down, give them a yellow ribbon and take them away. In addition to Ahmed, 30, from Idlib, there are also two brothers, twelve and 16, who only know one word in German and one destination: “Hannover”. A 23-year-old student from Homs can already say three complete sentences: “I love you! I’m going to Berlin! I’m staying in Germany!”
There are 29 tired people, all of them from Syria, according to their own statements, who were dropped off by a smuggler on the Polish side of the nearby railway bridge over the border river Neisse. Soon they will also appear in the official statistics as “entering the country illegally”. There were almost 71,000 by the end of August, including more than 7,600 at the German-Polish border in Brandenburg, where this group also appeared on this October morning.
The rising numbers are causing so much political unrest that Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has once again increased controls at the eastern borders. The migrants themselves, who usually volunteer to apply for asylum, are less targeted. It’s mainly about the criminal networks that bring people to Germany for a lot of money. “I want to stop this cruel business of people’s need,” Faeser said recently. Finding smugglers in order to get to the people behind them, “that is the main goal of our current work,” says Jens Schobranski, the responsible spokesman for the Federal Police.
Hundreds of arrests already this year
The driver of Ahmed and his group got away that morning. However, according to the Federal Police, 1,683 smugglers had already been caught by the end of August, significantly more than the 1,465 in the same period in 2022. The largest group of suspects were Syrians with 263 arrested, 252 were Ukrainian citizens, 140 had a Turkish passport, 89 a German, 78 an Afghan. The smugglers bring people to Germany in two main ways: via Russia and Belarus or via the Balkan route.
Ahmed and his group came via Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. But they say little about their helpers. Apparently they didn’t talk to the drivers and were locked in the back of vans without windows for hours, with only a bottle of water and a few bananas each. Maybe they were told not to say anything. Still, the deal isn’t as secretive as one might think.
The Abu Yamen shop
At the top of the chain are people like Abu Yamen in Turkey, who advertises his services on Tiktok. Short videos show people climbing fences, sitting tightly packed in cars or fighting their way through bushes. “Today we are on the way to Germany,” says one into the camera. Abu Yamen – that’s a code name – brings people from Turkey to Europe for up to 7,000 euros per person.
The smuggler tells the German Press Agency in Istanbul that he currently has around 50 to 60 customers a day. A few weeks ago there were still 500, but the Turkish police’s controls have become stricter. People would be brought to Poland, Germany or France via a network of intermediaries. He complains that gangs in Bulgaria and Hungary that rob refugees are a big problem.
The man in his mid-thirties rejects the accusation of making a business out of people’s needs. The refugees are his “brothers and sisters”. He just helps them get to where they want to go. “We guarantee security,” boasts the smuggler.
“Highly criminal networks”
Is it all just an act of friendship? Andreas Roßkopf sees it differently. “These smuggling organizations are highly criminal, globally networked organizations,” says the chairman of the police union responsible for the federal police and customs. The business is extremely professional.
Anyone who wants to make it to Western Europe transfers 8,000 to 10,000 euros or US dollars to a transfer account, which is only fully released once the person arrives at their destination. Helpers organize the trip in sections with various drivers who receive the coordinates of a pick-up and drop-off point via channels such as Telegram or Whatsapp. Drivers collect a fee of 500 to 700 dollars or euros per person transported. Beforehand, they send proof, such as a photo of the smuggled people at their destination on German territory.
Helpers with ladders
The route via Belarus to the European Union is a special case because the smuggling business in Moscow or Minsk is partly supported by the state. Claudia Ciobanu, Poland correspondent for the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, took a closer look. Accordingly, smugglers in the Middle East provide migrants with Russian visas that enable them to fly to Moscow. There, people are picked up from the airport and temporarily accommodated before they are driven by car or taxi to Belarus and from there to the Polish border.
According to Ciobanu’s research, locals provide the migrants with ladders or tools to overcome the 5.5 meter high border fence erected by Poland. As soon as people are in the EU country Poland, other drivers pick them up and drive them to Germany.
The smallest cogs in the machine
It is these drivers of the smuggling networks who sometimes get caught up at the border – the smallest cogs in the wheel. The investigators then try to get to the heads of the organizations via cell phone data and money flows. The complicated puzzle work takes a long time and usually only works internationally. In December 2022, the European police authority Europol reported a joint operation by investigators in Germany, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that spanned almost a year. In the end, 61 suspects were caught who are said to have been responsible for more than 100 smuggling operations on the Belarus route.
But there is so much money in this illegal business – billions, investigators estimate – that cracks in the illegal networks are apparently being patched quickly. Commercial smugglers are already facing long prison sentences, but new henchmen and instigators are apparently constantly being found.
Principle of deterrence
Police unionist Roßkopf believes that we have to turn all the screws, for example to make illegal money flows more difficult and to stop the smugglers’ advertising on social networks. He has some hope in the EU asylum reform, with more tightly sealed external borders and camps located there for the initial examination of asylum requests. “Then we will also take a lot away from the smuggling activities,” expects Roßkopf.
The principle of deterrence will work in the end, says Frank Malack, head of operations for the federal police on the morning when Ahmed and his group are discovered in Forst. The more smugglers are caught, the higher the risk becomes, the more difficult it becomes to find new drivers, and ultimately the higher the price becomes, so fewer migrants can afford it. That is his theory and probably also his hope.
That’s why Malack and his colleagues were racing along the highway near the Polish border this morning at 180 km/h with flashing lights when a new report came in over the radio: Another group of migrants, this time near Koppatz, not far from Forst. This time the smuggler should be arrested. A delivery van with an Oldenburg license plate was noticed as suspicious. But the driver took off again. He left behind 24 people, most of whom said they were Syrians with the hope of a new life in Germany.