Polish border authorities on Friday detained more than 130 illegal migrants who crossed into Poland through a covert tunnel in a hidden forest under the Polish-Belarus border, authorities said.
The passage was discovered on Thursday near the village of Narewka in the Podlasie region by officers of the Podlasie Border Guard.
“The tunnel, several dozen meters long and approximately 1.5 meters high, had its entrance concealed in the forest around 50 meters on the Belarusian side of the border. The exit was located roughly 10 meters from the barrier on the Polish side,” Border Guard spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Andrzej Juzwiak said. Thanks to electronic surveillance systems, officials determined that more than 180 people had passed through before the tunnel was uncovered, and over 130 migrants have been detained so far, with searches underway for others.
Among those arrested were mostly people from Afghanistan and Pakistan, along with some from India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Two suspected traffickers — a 69-year-old Polish man and a 49-year-old Lithuanian — have also been taken into custody.
This is the fourth tunnel of this kind found along the Poland-Belarus border this year, underscoring ongoing challenges in securing the EU’s eastern frontier against organised illegal crossings. Polish officials have repeatedly accused Belarus of facilitating migrant movements toward EU borders, a charge Minsk denies.
