Poland not an isolated case: What to know about secret migrant tunnel systems

On Friday, officers of the Podlaskie Border Guard discovered a tunnel connecting the Belarusian side of the border with Poland, as reported by Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński. This is the second tunnel discovered in Poland this year.

Authorities are still investigating who dug the tunnel and when, but Warsaw accused Belarus of helping illegal migrants cross the border, according to Russian state news agency TASS. Whether Belarus has anything to do with the tunnel remains unclear.

Since 2021, Belarusian President Aliaksandr Lukashenka has made it easier for third-country nationals to obtain a Belarusian visa and promised them a route to Europe.

Consequently, many have entered Belarus, hoping to reach the EU via Poland. However, Polish armed forces and border guards pushed them back, leaving many stranded between both sides.

Lukashenka denies the allegations that Belarus, together with Russia, is deliberately sending illegal migrants to Europe. "They have convinced themselves that Belarus is to blame for the migration crisis. But we are absolutely not to blame," TASS quoted Lukashenka.

Minsk had assisted the EU in combating illegal migration until sanctions were imposed on Belarus. "We will not protect you as we did before. We will not intercept them [the migrants] at the border, as was previously the case," Lukashenka said.

In 2025, Poland completed an electric border fence along the entire border with Belarus, equipped with artificial intelligence that detects the smallest signals. The cost amounted to $136.6 million, according to TASS.

Smuggling tunnels also found at the Serbian-Hungarian border

But Poland is not the only country dealing with smuggling tunnels. Hungary faced the same problem some time ago: Hungarian police discovered a 24-meter-long tunnel at the border with Serbia, near the Hungarian town of Morahal. This was reported by Serbian media in June 2020.

It was the third tunnel discovered in Hungary in this area within just one year, as reported by Radio Television Serbia (RTS).

In 2019, Hungarian police discovered two such tunnels that migrants used to cross from the Serbian side to Western Europe. One tunnel near the village of Asotthalom was 34 metres long. 44 migrants and one smuggler were arrested. The second tunnel in the village of Csikeria was 21.7 meters long.

Hungarian President Victor Orbán has long called for new laws to curb the influx of illegal migration. In 2015, at the height of the migration crisis, Hungary erected barbed wire fences on its southern borders to stem the flow of people heading to Western Europe.

Across Europe, countries are beginning to implement stricter measures to curb illegal migration. In Germany, alongside increased border controls, deportation centres in third countries and secondary centres domestically are being discussed. This was recently discussed by Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt with his colleagues in Munich.