There have been stationary controls at the border with Poland and the Czech Republic for three months. The conclusion is mixed: the number of illegal border crossings has fallen – but the number of asylum applications has not.
Containers have recently been parked on the city bridge in Frankfurt an der Oder, right on the border with Poland. They are makeshift offices and lounges for the federal police. She has been carrying out random checks there since mid-October. It’s about apprehending illegal immigrants.
Interior Minister Nancy Faeser has announced that the stationary border control stations will now remain in place until at least March 15th. This also applies to the border with the Czech Republic and Switzerland.
“The federal police have arrested around 340 smugglers since mid-October as part of internal border controls,” says the Federal Ministry of the Interior’s website. “Thanks to our temporary border controls, the number of unauthorized entries nationwide has fallen by more than 60 percent from over 20,000 in October to around 7,300 in November.”
Stübgen: Controls have proven their worth
Michael Stübgen, Brandenburg’s Interior Minister, is also very satisfied with the controls. The CDU politician prefers this RBB a preliminary positive assessment: “You can say that the illegal migration pressure has virtually collapsed.”
Of course, this also has something to do with the season and the weather, admits Stübgen. However, only five refugees were now entering the country per day, compared to an average of 60 refugees in September. “That means the border controls are proving their worth here,” says Stübgen.
At the end of November he presented the first reports of success: by then, 266 smugglers had been arrested and 670 outstanding arrest warrants had been executed. 4,790 people were banned from entering the country.
Now other countries are also controlling
The stationary controls from the German side would have a kind of domino effect. Interior Minister Stübgen says that days before the German police began controls on the German-Polish border in mid-October, Poland had introduced controls on the border with the Czech Republic, and the Czech Republic with Slovakia.
The reality so far: As long as the migrants in neighboring countries simply moved towards Germany, no one cared about them and turned a blind eye. The main thing is that they don’t stay, but move on. Since Germany started turning people away at the border, the situation has changed.
Expand mobile controls?
Thorsten Grimm, deputy federal chairman of the German police union (DPolG), is also firmly convinced of the border controls. For him, they are currently the only effective way to take action against illegal migration.
The police are still reaching their limits in terms of personnel. Each case must be treated individually and many still come without papers, said Grimm. If he had his way, the controls should be expanded. Because of the stationary controls, smugglers look for new escape routes, and these could be better captured through increased veil searches, i.e. through mobile controls.
“We have to know who is coming into the country. We know from secret services that potential assassins are also sent on escape routes to Germany,” the police union member is convinced.
Regarding the German-Czech border, Grimm says: “There have already been more than 18,000 apprehensions here this year who are subject to irregular migration.” That is an increase of more than 26 percent compared to 2022. The focus is on the Saxon-Czech border.
The number of apprehensions on the Bavarian-Czech border is declining. “This in turn is due to the high control pressure and the density of controls,” says Thorsten Grimm.
Doubts about effectiveness
Border controls have not yet had a significant impact on the number of asylum applicants. According to the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, the number rose again sharply from October to November: from 31,887 in October to 35,316 in November.
Migration researcher Gerald Knaus doesn’t think much of increased border controls within the EU. He is convinced that this will not curb illegal immigration. If the refugees made it to the EU, they wouldn’t go back.
They would then try again and again to get to the country of their choice and no state has so many police that can monitor so comprehensively and prevent that, says Knaus. The opposite effect is that the refugees will confide in even more smugglers who will smuggle them into Germany via secret, possibly dangerous routes.
For Knaus, the solution includes, among other things, more consistent protection of the EU’s external borders and readmission agreements with other countries. He believes that German society is not against migration. The problem is uncontrolled, illegal immigration. And that would also cause unrest in traditional immigration countries such as Australia or Canada.
Inpatient checks will probably remain for some time
Andreas Roßkopf, chairman of the police union (GdP), is also more critical of stationary border controls than his colleagues from the other union (DPolG). “The vast majority of people who come to us are smuggled by highly professional, internationally organized smuggling gangs,” says Roßkopf.
From experience with Austria, we have known for many years that smuggling organizations react within hours and bypass the stationary controls, said Roßkopf. “They earn $8,000 to $10,000 per migrant with a smuggling guarantee. Anyone who believes that we can prevent this with our 18 or 19 stationary border controls is a big mistake.”
But Roßkopf also thinks highly of the veiled manhunt. And in general, the police need to be better equipped. With modern box vans, mobile offices, emergency generators and drone technology. The model is the Bavarian border police, which have modern technical equipment. However, Roßkopf suspects that, despite certain doubts about their effectiveness, the stationary controls will remain for the time being – at least until July, until the European Football Championship is over.
Border frustration on the German-Polish border
In any case, for the German-Polish border region, the stationary controls are a change that not everyone is happy about. Just as the controls began, traffic was backed up far into the Polish town of Slubice. Namely from Poland towards Germany.
A Polish gas station attendant says that German customers don’t show up because they don’t know how long they’ll be stuck in traffic on the way back. A student at Viadrina University who regularly drives a larger car to Poland, including to buy food, reports that he is now waved out every time by German officials. Their suspicion: He would bring migrants across the border.
The situation has now eased somewhat. But some people long for the time when everyone could travel back and forth unmolested.