A Polish court has sentenced ten people to prison for helping at least 225 migrants to cross illegally from Belarus into Poland.
The court in Lublin found that the group facilitated the entry of hundreds of people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and several other Asian and African countries at the turn of 2024 and 2025.
According to prosecutors, who announced the verdicts on Thursday, the convicted individuals – all citizens of Turkmenistan or Ukraine – were acting for financial gain.
Their sentences, which are final, range from one year and one month to two years and two months behind bars.
The district prosecutor’s office in Lublin lauded the ruling, saying it was “significant” that the court imposed unconditional sentences, meaning the defendants must serve time in jail.
How were migrants smuggled?
The group helped migrants to cross into Poland from Belarus outside official checkpoints, without undergoing border control and without valid travel documents.
Turkmen nationals served as guides, leading migrants across the so-called “green border” – unguarded stretches of the frontier, typically forests or fields, located between official crossings.
Ukrainian members of the group then collected the migrants from designated points and transported them onward in arranged vehicles to selected European Union countries.
Weaponizing migration
Poland has faced a migration crisis on its eastern borders since late 2021, after thousands of mostly Middle Eastern and African migrants began attempting to cross into Poland and Lithuania illegally via Belarus.
Warsaw and Brussels have long described this as an orchestrated attempt by Russia-allied Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to destabilize the EU.
Many of those who illegally enter Poland or Lithuania from Belarus travel onward to richer EU countries such as Germany. This prompted Poland to impose border checks on its frontier with Germany last year, while Berlin has maintained controls on the same border since 2023.
Poland in May 2024 announced plans to reinforce stretches of its border with Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad under a multi-year project dubbed “East Shield.”
The project is expected to include physical obstacles, such as anti-tank mines and barriers, as well as anti-drone capabilities.
Warsaw is set to spend 10 billion zlotys (€2.3 billion) on the initiative, some of which will come from EU funds.