It’s a test at the border with Austria: A small yellow box is stuck to a civilian police vehicle. Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) looks at the display waiting, then a symbol flashes. It shows a stick figure in a truck – so there must be a person in the truck. Police officers open the rear door of the van, behind which an officer was hiding. With the action in Neuhaus am Inn (Passau district), the border police demonstrated their new people detector on Thursday. It should be able to track people’s heartbeats.
The device is intended to support the border police in their daily work along the borders with Austria and the Czech Republic. It can be attached to the car during a vehicle inspection and show within ten to 20 seconds whether there is still a person in the car, explained Thomas Ritzer from the police in Passau.#
During his visit to the border post in Lower Bavaria, Interior Minister Herrmann was shown the detector and at the same time took stock of the past year, in which significantly more smuggling offenses and illegal migration were detected. At the same time, he criticized what he saw as the “inadequate EU external border protection”, which continued to require controls at Germany’s borders.
During controls at the borders and at Nuremberg and Memmingen airports, exactly 4,667 unauthorized entries and re-entries were registered in 2023, Herrmann said. That is an increase of around 52 percent compared to the previous year. There was an increase in smuggling crimes by a good 116 percent to 413 cases. The controls should also have a deterrent effect.
The border police in the Free State, which was founded in July 2018, are to be further increased in terms of personnel, from currently around 850 to 1,500 positions in 2028. There are no signs of a decline in illegal migration, said Herrmann. Other countries in the Schengen Agreement allowed refugees to enter and transit uncontrolled, thereby violating their obligations under the Schengen Agreement. Refugees who have traveled on to Germany are often no longer taken back, even if the Schengen Agreement requires it. The federal government can no longer refrain from turning back illegal migrants at the border even if they apply for asylum. The border controls are in the interest of your own security.
The border police cooperate with the federal and riot police. For the Federal Police, Director Uwe Landgrebe from Munich recorded more than 34,000 cases of unauthorized entry in 2023 – that was an increase of almost 5,000 compared to 2022. What is striking is the massively increased willingness to take risks among smugglers, who often flee from controls at high speed attempted and thereby endangering the lives of the people being trafficked, the officials and uninvolved road users. Landgrebe recalled an accident with a suspected smuggling vehicle in which seven passengers died in Upper Bavaria in October 2023. The smugglers experienced unprecedented brutality.
According to the Interior Ministry, the border police achieved a total of 19,650 search hits in 2023, around 2,000 fewer than in the previous year. This included 1,352 people who had an arrest warrant and almost 3,600 cases of drug-related crime.