The Polish border guard has discovered a tunnel beneath the Poland-Belarus frontier, with officials confirming that more than 180 migrants entered Poland on Thursday, December 11th, through the underground passage. The tunnel, located near the village of Narewka in the northeastern region, is the fourth such structure detected along the border in 2025. Authorities report that over 130 people have been detained so far, while searches for the remaining migrants continue.
Poland has heavily reinforced its border with Belarus since 2021, after authorities in Warsaw and other European capitals accused Minsk of deliberately directing migrants toward the European Union as part of a hybrid operation. Border Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Andrzej Juźwiak said officers discovered the passage during routine patrols.
According to Juźwiak, “the several-dozen-meter tunnel under the barrier and the technical road was about 1.5 meters high. Its entrance, hidden in the forest, was located about 50 meters on the Belarusian side of the border, and the exit was about 10 meters from the barrier on the Polish side.” He added that electronic monitoring systems allowed officers to determine how many people had crossed.
Officials confirm that “as a result of immediate action, more than 130 people have so far been apprehended and the search for the remaining perpetrators of the illegal border crossing is ongoing.” Soldiers and police officers, supported by sniffer dogs, were deployed to track those who fled.
Most of the intercepted migrants were citizens of Afghanistan and Pakistan, with others coming from India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. In a related operation, border guards also detained two drivers suspected of arriving to collect the migrants: a 69-year-old Polish man and a 49-year-old Lithuanian national. Juźwiak said the men were allegedly planning to transport the migrants onward toward Western Europe.
