Border defender officers along with soldiers of the Territorial Defence Army Stop a Lithuanian citizen residing in Poland, suspected of participating in the illegal transport of migrants. The event occurred on 10 February 2026 in the Rutka-Tartak municipality area, on the Polish-Lithuanian border section. According to the service, a man was to smuggle 4 Ethiopian invaders who had previously crossed the border on foot, in an illegal location.
The immigrant was smuggling immigrants. It appears from the Border Guard's findings that migrants had passes from a abroad centre in Latvia, and the action plan consisted of bypassing border controls. First the foreigners were blown up on the Lithuanian side, then the courier was expected to choice them up already in Poland and carry them further to the west of Europe. For organising illegal crossing the border, there is simply a punishment of up to 8 years imprisonment.
According to the data from the Podlaskie Border defender Branch, six people have already been detained in the Lithuanian section since the beginning of 2026. erstwhile actions show that the course is repetitive – 42 people were detained during weekly border checks in July 2025, including 8 alleged couriers carrying migrants.
Similar incidents besides happen on another sections of the border. For example, in May 2025, officers detained a driver carrying six migrants without documents, and these actions are part of a wider fight against the smuggling of people through Poland towards Germany and Western Europe.
According to data published by migration services and the analysis of the smuggling market, in 2024 almost half of the about 600 people accused of organising illegal migration in Poland were Ukrainian citizens. Experts indicate that Ukrainian citizens frequently appear among detained couriers. This is due, among others, to their large number of legal residents in Poland and to the fact that smuggling networks recruit drivers through net communicators, offering them fast earnings.
Examples from the activities of the Border defender show that the detainees are mainly Ukrainian citizens transporting migrants from Asia and Africa to the west of Europe. There are Lithuanians and Latvians in the another places.
Poland has been struggling with migration force for respective years, which after the crisis on the Belarusian border took the form of organized smuggling of people through various sections of borders, including Polish-Lithuanian. Couriers usually operate in a series of stages – migrants cross the border on ft and are then picked up by abroad drivers and transported further, into the European Union. Border defender activities and global cooperation aim to reduce this phenomenon, which remains 1 of the main safety challenges in the region.
It is worth noting that in the analysis of services, there is increasingly a regularity in which people with their own migration experiences are utilized as drivers or intermediaries in the transport of subsequent foreigners. According to the SG and experts in the smuggling market, this results from easier recruitment – specified people know the realities of travel, languages and routes utilized by criminal networks. However, officers stress that this is not a regulation for the full community, but a pattern of action for groups organising illegal migration, which has been increasingly recorded during detentions in fresh years.
Immigrants are much more likely to smuggle another immigrants, as they do not have a connection with the countries that destabilize, or even dislike them, like the Ukrians and Lithuanians – Poland.
