Eastern Immigration Corridor

Largely unreported by the media or remarked on by politicians, the migrant flow into Germany from the east has solidified over the last two years, with people entering the Schengen area via Poland by the help of human traffickers.

Details of the modus operandi for one this migration route has been repeatedly published by EUROPOL in the framework of combined operation of Europol's European Migrant Smuggling Centre (EMSC) and the Polish Border Guard. The latest operation is dated at the beginning of June this year and striked illegal migration by airplane from Greece.

According to the official sources, five suspects, who were suspected to be members of an organised criminal network, were arrested. The network was involved in smuggling Middle Eastern natives from Greece to Poland illegally by charter flights organised by various travel agencies using “look alike” or fake documents provided by the organised crime group and forwarding the migrants from Poland onwards to Western Europe.

The established concept behind this method is quite simple: for the price of around 3.000,- € the criminals were searching for Polish nationals looking quite similar to the migrant and enabling them to use their Polish identification cards to use flights inside the European Union on behalf of the Polish national. 

Please click on the links below for more information about the issue:

EUROPOL Press Release 2017

EUROPOL Press Release 2016

Article at politico.eu