What happens when governments refuse to govern? We can see the answer in the small German town of Harsefeld, Lower Saxony, which has lately been gripped by a wave of crime. Residents have been complaining of a gang of what appears to be mostly migrant teenagers terrorising the town with violence, drug dealing, and extortion. Police have apparently been unable to deal with the chaos, citing staffing shortages. The police station in Harsefeld is reportedly also closed, forcing emergency calls to be rerouted to a town 15 kilometres away and allowing criminals to flee before the authorities arrive.
In response to this breakdown of the law, local residents have been forced to take the law into their own hands. Groups of citizens have been patrolling the town and recording incidents. A police spokesman has described the groups as “quite creepy” and warned that “a vigilante group doesn’t help anyone.” Neither, presumably, does a completely impotent police force.
Local police say that they are currently investigating a number of reports, but that “it’s taking time,” despite the fact that the gang leaders are known to the authorities and video evidence exists of their crimes. But a significant backlog, as well as the German legal system making it difficult to prosecute minors, means that no charges have so far been brought against any of the perpetrators.
This failure to act is part of a broader pattern of state paralysis, which is currently playing out across Europe. Despite both the Netherlands and Germany reintroducing land border checks, locals in the Dutch village of Ter Apel are fed up with their government’s inaction, as illegal migrants are still able to cross over from Germany into the Netherlands. As a result, concerned citizens banded together to carry out their own DIY border checks. Armed with hi-vis vests and torches, last month they started to flag down cars near the border to question drivers and, in some cases, to look inside car boots. As one of the men involved told Dutch newspaper AD, “Nothing is being done, so we will do it ourselves.”
As in Germany, the authorities branded the groups “dangerous” and “really unacceptable,” and begged citizens to “let the police and border police do their job.” Of course, if the police were actually policing anything, we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. Dutch police did, however, manage to find the manpower to arrest one of the men leading the campaign. Police explained, without a hint of irony, that the 54-year-old’s actions posed a threat to public order and safety.
Poland is facing a near identical situation, also on its border with Germany. Here, too, citizens have grown tired of the endless influx of illegal migrants and have formed their own Civic Border Defence Movement. Last week, they were joined by farmers and their convoy of tractors to help secure the border, gathering near key crossings to keep watch for suspicious vehicles.
Their job is made all the more difficult by the fact that the German authorities are actively working against them. German police vans have been caught on video taking migrants across the border and dumping them back out on the Polish side, where they are able to freely flee into the country.
This trend of grassroots resistance to government ineptitude can also be seen in Ireland. In towns and villages, locals have organised blockades, road closures, and street protests in response to the sudden arrival of asylum seekers, who are usually housed by the state in areas where housing is already scarce and public services overwhelmed. In March 2023, around 50 protesters physically blocked a bus from entering Columb Barracks in County Westmeath, where 120 single male migrants were supposed to be accommodated. One protester even chained the gates shut with a lock. The standoff lasted for a couple of hours while Gardaí (Irish police officers) attempted to negotiate. When this failed, the bus was forced to drive away, eliciting cheers from the crowd.
Just two months later, in the rural village of Inch, County Clare, residents stopped the arrival of more asylum seekers to a local hotel by blocking the roads with tractors and silage bales. The protest escalated to the point where a bus carrying 34 male migrants was boarded by citizens, who demanded a headcount and checked IDs. Inch’s population is so small as to not be recorded, and is home to a church, a primary school, the hotel, and not much else. Needless to say, it was nowhere near suitable to house refugees. Nor were the locals consulted about their arrival. None of this mattered to the Irish government, of course, with then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar saying: “Nobody gets to say who can or cannot live in their area.” The blockade lasted for several days, until the minister of state for integration agreed not to send any more migrants to the area for the next four weeks.
Later in 2023, similar scenes unfolded in Dromahair, County Leitrim. There, locals reportedly set up an ‘illegal’ road checkpoint to prevent the rumoured arrival of yet another group of asylum seekers in the area. Dromahair, which has a population of roughly 800 people, was supposed to receive 155 refugees at a local hotel. A spokesman from the group later denied that any checkpoints were in place, although a crowd of 400 did peacefully protest against the arrival of more migrants.
The question we should be asking is: What did the authorities expect to happen? When the state fails, it leaves no choice but for ‘vigilantes,’ as they’re so often derisively called, to step in and take the law into their own hands. If people feel unsafe in the communities they have lived in their entire lives, then ordinary citizens will inevitably start doing what the government won’t. It’s not ideal, but it’s also not irrational. Various police forces are right when they say these actions are dangerous—someone could indeed get badly hurt. But what choice are people left with? This is the natural consequence of a system that no longer serves or protects its own.
If governments want to put a stop to this vigilante action, there is an obvious solution staring them in the face—actually police the borders and enforce the laws that already exist to keep citizens safe. It shouldn’t be too much to ask that rural villages don’t become overrun with illegal migrants. Or that sleepy towns aren’t turned into hotspots of gang crime. When people see that the law no longer protects them, they are destined to lose faith in not only the police, but also the entire political system.
What we are witnessing in border towns and countryside communities across Europe right now is normal people’s desire to reclaim control. If the state won’t do its job, the people will do it themselves. And who can blame them?
Why Europeans Are Taking The Law Into Their Own Hands
Members of the Polish ‘Border Defense Movement’ (ROG) hold a post as an unofficial “citizens’ patrol” at the Polish-German border in Slubice, western Poland, close to the German city of Frankfurt an der Oder, on July 7, 2025.
Wojtek Radwanski / AFP
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What happens when governments refuse to govern? We can see the answer in the small German town of Harsefeld, Lower Saxony, which has lately been gripped by a wave of crime. Residents have been complaining of a gang of what appears to be mostly migrant teenagers terrorising the town with violence, drug dealing, and extortion. Police have apparently been unable to deal with the chaos, citing staffing shortages. The police station in Harsefeld is reportedly also closed, forcing emergency calls to be rerouted to a town 15 kilometres away and allowing criminals to flee before the authorities arrive.
In response to this breakdown of the law, local residents have been forced to take the law into their own hands. Groups of citizens have been patrolling the town and recording incidents. A police spokesman has described the groups as “quite creepy” and warned that “a vigilante group doesn’t help anyone.” Neither, presumably, does a completely impotent police force.
Local police say that they are currently investigating a number of reports, but that “it’s taking time,” despite the fact that the gang leaders are known to the authorities and video evidence exists of their crimes. But a significant backlog, as well as the German legal system making it difficult to prosecute minors, means that no charges have so far been brought against any of the perpetrators.
This failure to act is part of a broader pattern of state paralysis, which is currently playing out across Europe. Despite both the Netherlands and Germany reintroducing land border checks, locals in the Dutch village of Ter Apel are fed up with their government’s inaction, as illegal migrants are still able to cross over from Germany into the Netherlands. As a result, concerned citizens banded together to carry out their own DIY border checks. Armed with hi-vis vests and torches, last month they started to flag down cars near the border to question drivers and, in some cases, to look inside car boots. As one of the men involved told Dutch newspaper AD, “Nothing is being done, so we will do it ourselves.”
As in Germany, the authorities branded the groups “dangerous” and “really unacceptable,” and begged citizens to “let the police and border police do their job.” Of course, if the police were actually policing anything, we wouldn’t be in this situation to begin with. Dutch police did, however, manage to find the manpower to arrest one of the men leading the campaign. Police explained, without a hint of irony, that the 54-year-old’s actions posed a threat to public order and safety.
Poland is facing a near identical situation, also on its border with Germany. Here, too, citizens have grown tired of the endless influx of illegal migrants and have formed their own Civic Border Defence Movement. Last week, they were joined by farmers and their convoy of tractors to help secure the border, gathering near key crossings to keep watch for suspicious vehicles.
Their job is made all the more difficult by the fact that the German authorities are actively working against them. German police vans have been caught on video taking migrants across the border and dumping them back out on the Polish side, where they are able to freely flee into the country.
This trend of grassroots resistance to government ineptitude can also be seen in Ireland. In towns and villages, locals have organised blockades, road closures, and street protests in response to the sudden arrival of asylum seekers, who are usually housed by the state in areas where housing is already scarce and public services overwhelmed. In March 2023, around 50 protesters physically blocked a bus from entering Columb Barracks in County Westmeath, where 120 single male migrants were supposed to be accommodated. One protester even chained the gates shut with a lock. The standoff lasted for a couple of hours while Gardaí (Irish police officers) attempted to negotiate. When this failed, the bus was forced to drive away, eliciting cheers from the crowd.
Just two months later, in the rural village of Inch, County Clare, residents stopped the arrival of more asylum seekers to a local hotel by blocking the roads with tractors and silage bales. The protest escalated to the point where a bus carrying 34 male migrants was boarded by citizens, who demanded a headcount and checked IDs. Inch’s population is so small as to not be recorded, and is home to a church, a primary school, the hotel, and not much else. Needless to say, it was nowhere near suitable to house refugees. Nor were the locals consulted about their arrival. None of this mattered to the Irish government, of course, with then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar saying: “Nobody gets to say who can or cannot live in their area.” The blockade lasted for several days, until the minister of state for integration agreed not to send any more migrants to the area for the next four weeks.
Later in 2023, similar scenes unfolded in Dromahair, County Leitrim. There, locals reportedly set up an ‘illegal’ road checkpoint to prevent the rumoured arrival of yet another group of asylum seekers in the area. Dromahair, which has a population of roughly 800 people, was supposed to receive 155 refugees at a local hotel. A spokesman from the group later denied that any checkpoints were in place, although a crowd of 400 did peacefully protest against the arrival of more migrants.
The question we should be asking is: What did the authorities expect to happen? When the state fails, it leaves no choice but for ‘vigilantes,’ as they’re so often derisively called, to step in and take the law into their own hands. If people feel unsafe in the communities they have lived in their entire lives, then ordinary citizens will inevitably start doing what the government won’t. It’s not ideal, but it’s also not irrational. Various police forces are right when they say these actions are dangerous—someone could indeed get badly hurt. But what choice are people left with? This is the natural consequence of a system that no longer serves or protects its own.
If governments want to put a stop to this vigilante action, there is an obvious solution staring them in the face—actually police the borders and enforce the laws that already exist to keep citizens safe. It shouldn’t be too much to ask that rural villages don’t become overrun with illegal migrants. Or that sleepy towns aren’t turned into hotspots of gang crime. When people see that the law no longer protects them, they are destined to lose faith in not only the police, but also the entire political system.
What we are witnessing in border towns and countryside communities across Europe right now is normal people’s desire to reclaim control. If the state won’t do its job, the people will do it themselves. And who can blame them?
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