Poland at odds with Germany over cross-border migrant drop-off by police

Poland's prime minister has said he would soon contact his German counterpart over an incident last week involving German police being caught while driving a migrant family to Poland.

"I will soon talk to (German) Chancellor (Olaf) Scholz about an unacceptable incident involving the German police and a migrant family on our side of the border," Donald Tusk said Monday on X, adding the matter "must be explained in detail."

Commenting on the incident which took place last week when a German police car crossed into the Polish border town of Osinow Dolny before leaving a family of five migrants behind, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on X, "

According to the state-run PAP news agency, German police spokesman Bianca Jurgo claimed that he family already had legal papers for Poland and the police had taken them back to Poland to simply avoid bureaucratic procedure.

"The Afghani family who had Polish refugee status certificates for adults and Polish identity cards for children with them didn't ask police officers for asylum from Germany," she was quoted as saying.

Seeking to avoid detaining the family for "an excessively long time," the German police officers acted after the Polish side failed to respond, Jurgo argued.

In the first five months of this year, Germany apprehended 7,371 foreigners trying to illegally cross the border from Poland to Germany.

Of this number, 3,578 were returned to Poland, among them 2,238 Ukrainian nationals.