The German Police Union has called for more personnel to curb migrant smuggling.
"Hardly any migrant makes it all the way to Germany without being smuggled," chairman Andreas Roßkopf told Rheinische Post newspaper in comments published on Thursday.
In order to combat irregular migration, investigative services and federal police inspectorates must be "urgently strengthened in terms of personnel and material," he said.
Roßkopf spoke of an "enormous lack of personnel." Hundreds of unprocessed files were currently lying on desks. The federal budget must be improved noticeably, he said.
Smugglers were "increasingly brutal and ruthless - both towards the migrants and the police," Roßkopf said.
For the first half of 2023, Germany's Federal Police reported an increase in smuggling. By June, 1,007 cases had been registered.
Dieter Romann, president of the federal police, said last week that smugglers did not care about the danger. "They only care about money. And at the moment, smuggling people simply earns more than smuggling drugs or weapons."
