What is the purpose of returning border control? We went to see

Since last week, Germany has controlled all its borders. Between Brandenburg and Poland, where this measure has been in place for some time now, it is producing notable effects. Reporting.

Hansjörg Friedrich Müller, Francfort-sur-l’Oder

Traffic on the bridge linking Frankfurt (Oder) to the Polish town of Slubice is particularly busy this morning: many German-registered cars are arriving from the east, and their occupants, as are the many pensioners crossing the border at foot, probably returning from their shopping.

Since last October, fixed controls have been reestablished on the German-Polish border, a first since 2007the year Poland joined the Schengen Agreement. This measure is part of a series of initiatives taken by the Federal Republic to combat illegal immigration. Since Monday, vehicles have also been stopped at Germany’s western borders, passports checked, passengers searched, and trunks inspected.

Two German border guards stand in front of a blue container. He has a machine gun slung over his shoulder, she carries a red police ladle in her hand. Most drivers can cross the border without being worried.

Nobody wants to be accused of racial profiling

On the other hand, the vans in which Polish craftsmen are usually found on their way to their German customers are often checked. It “regularly” happens that migrants are found in vehicles, reports Chief Superintendent André Behlendorf of the Frankfurt federal police, but most of the time, only hand tools are found.

“In order to minimize nuisance for commuters and regular travelers, we only carry out visual checks and random checks», Explains a police officer. And to add:

It’s hard to believe that the officers aren’t paying attention to the appearance and likely origins of the passengers. However, in a politically correct context, no police officer in Germany wants to be accused of racial profiling, that is, of making ethnic origin a criterion.

An expensive and very powerful BMW SUV is puzzling: the Serbian license plate is unusual in the region; the retired couple sitting in the car could be from India or Pakistan, but probably belong to the Roma minority.

Officers check passports, the driver must get out of the car and open the trunk. Eventually, the Serbian couple was allowed to continue their journey. They presented themselves as spa guests from the neighboring town of Bad Saarow, who had taken an excursion to Poland, explains an official.

While city buses connecting Frankfurt to Slubice are allowed to pass, coaches are checked in most cases. Officers removed a young man from a green Flixbus bus traveling from Gorzow Wielkopolski, Poland, to Delmenhorst, northern Germany. He is a Ukrainian; he cannot leave while the bus is allowed to continue on its way.

Despite everything, the man seems in good spirits; when he gets into a police car, he smiles. “He will now be taken to Eisenhüttenstadt, a nearby town,” explains a police officer. There, in the first reception center of the State of Brandenburg, the Ukrainian will go through the “processing line”, what officials mean by an interrogation. The most probable is that the police finally took him back to the bridge and asked him to return to Poland on foot.

A little more than half of people returned

Until a few years ago, it was mainly Iraqis, Syrians, Afghans and Turkish Kurds who arrived on German soil in Frankfurt. Migration flows are part of the hybrid war waged by Vladimir Putin against the West: Migrants from the Near and Middle East are first transported to Belarus, an ally of Moscow. Then they are taken to the Polish border, from where they try to make their way to Germany.

Some of them may want to escape military service. Syrians, Afghans and Kurds continue to come. Most of the time, these are young men, but sometimes also families with children.

Between January and August, just over 4,000 asylum applications were submitted in Brandenburg; in 2023, this figure has exceeded 9,000 for the entire year. The majority of migrants, however, reach Germany by other routes. In Brandenburg, where a relatively wide river forms the border, crossings can be controlled more effectively than elsewhere, so the state is not the main gateway for migrants.

People who do not seek asylum at the border are quickly turned away; the same applies to people prohibited from entering. In Brandenburg, this concerns a little more than half of the arrivals: between October and July, 8,231 people were found to have unauthorized entry, 4,649 of them were sent back to Poland, writes the press service of Brandenburg. the Berlin Federal Police on request.

Across Germany, around 30,000 people have been turned away since border controls began. Compared to the 160,000 people who applied for asylum in the Federal Republic between January and August, this may not seem like much. But border controls are not as ineffective as, for example, the policies of the German Greens claim.

The high proportion of rejections may be surprising, because one might think that we now know that only those who seek asylum can stay. Some migrants may be hoping to undergo a procedure elsewhere, in another federal state or in a neighboring country in Western Europe where relatives already reside, explains a police officer. If we see cars from France, Belgium or the United Kingdom near the border, we can assume that they are there to pick up those passing through.

“Understanding” of the German procedure

“Cooperation between German and Polish police officers is very good”says André Behlendorf. Already since the 1990s, Germans and Poles have been patrolling together. At first, some Poles still had doubts when they saw a German uniform, but mutual trust is now well established. This is not the case for Polish colleagues who let migrants pass.

The constraints for commuters do not seem too great, at least in Frankfurt: the checks to which they must submit are generally carried out in a few minutes, reports a Polish craftsman. He says he understands the German procedure.

Standing on the bridge, a German retiree looks at the Oder, wide and slow in the rays of the sun. The woman seems relaxed, she just had a coffee in Slubice, she says, taking off her sunglasses. For her, the controls changed nothing. Right up to the middle of the bridge, where Poland begins, there are AfD election posters: “It’s time to stop the asylum industry”, some of them read . The subject is likely to remain topical in Germany for a long time.

Translated and adapted by Noëline Flippe