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Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic are establishing a joint task force to crack down on “inhumane smuggling crime” and illegal immigration, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser announced on Friday.
“Together, we want to smash the cruel business of smuggling gangs that make maximum profit from the plight of people and smuggle them across borders in a life-threatening way,” Faeser said in a statement Friday.
“That is why we have now agreed to step up joint patrols by the police forces there with our federal police on Czech and Polish territory as well,” she added.
The joint task force — which Faeser coordinated with Czech Interior Minister Vít Rakušan and Poland’s Mariusz Kamiński — will be headed by Europol’s EMPACT program. German, Czech and Polish police will work together on each other’s territories to curb illegal immigration and to identify smuggler routes.
This is Faeser’s latest attempt to control illegal immigration after she announced temporary controls on Germany’s borders with Poland and the Czech Republic on Wednesday. Her move comes as Germany’s mainstream parties have increasingly panicked and changed their stance on migration, amid the growing popularity of the far-right party AfD.
With elections in Germany’s state of Hesse next week, Faeser — a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats and who is half-heartedly running for prime minister of Hesse — is trying to wade in safe waters. If she does not win the Hesse elections, she wants to keep her post as interior minister of Germany, she announced.
