Human rights defenders providing humanitarian, medical, and legal support to migrants and asylum seekers at Poland’s border with Belarus say Polish authorities continue to target them with prosecutions, interrogation, and home searches, even as the number of people trying to cross declines. Fading public attention and shrinking funding are leaving them vulnerable to government harassment as well as continuing online threats.
Since 2021, Belarus has encouraged and enabled tens of thousands of people to cross its border into Poland, apparently seeking to create political problems for the European Union amid lingering public hostility towards migrants and asylum seekers following the continent-wide crisis that peaked in 2015 and 2016, when millions arrived in Europe. As during that period, many people attempting to cross from Belarus into Poland — and increasingly into the Baltic countries of Lithuania and Latvia — are fleeing conflict and persecution in the Middle East and Africa. Those arriving at the Polish border often have been met with hostility and violence from Polish border guards and other security forces.
The Poland-based non-governmental organization (NGO) We Are Monitoring has recorded more than 13,000 pushbacks (forcing people seeking asylum back across the border) and at least 107 deaths at the border in the five years since the crisis began. Polish courts in several cases have found those pushbacks unlawful, and in July 2025 a court awarded compensation for the first time to two Afghan nationals detained without justification in 2021 and returned to Belarus.
Yet, Poland is among the EU countries where people are most often prosecuted for helping migrants. Brussels-based NGO Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM) recorded at least 20 people facing legal proceedings in Poland in 2025, second only to Greece, which became notorious for tactics such as using equipment intended for sea rescues to instead push migrants’ vessels back into international waters. Even in recent days, EU and British foreign ministers met to discuss tightening border restrictions further.
Poland responded to the arrivals from Belarus by building a 5.5-meter-tall (about 18-foot-tall) steel fence, expanding electronic surveillance, creating a buffer zone, stationing soldiers at the border, and suspending the right to seek asylum there. The suspension, introduced in March 2025 for 60 days, has been renewed continuously since. On Sept. 18, Parliament approved the ninth consecutive extension by 418 votes to 16. Although it formally applies only at the border, activists say people who crossed there are blocked from seeking asylum even after traveling farther into Poland, as we outlined in a recent report. The law allows for exceptions for vulnerable groups, including pregnant women, but it is applied inconsistently and border guards decide who qualifies.
Crossings from Belarus have dropped sharply in the wake of these and other shifts. The Polish Interior Ministry recorded about 235 attempted crossings in the first half of 2026, compared with more than 15,500 during the same period last year. Yet, the pressure on those helping migrants has continued.
Legal Harassment
Our organization, Human Rights First, has visited the border regularly since 2021, documenting attacks on activists and observing their trials. We returned in August to meet activists and humanitarian workers in the region and published the above-mentioned report on the continued targeting and legal harassment they face.
The most prominent recent case of prosecution involved five activists who gave food, water, and clothing to a desperate Iraqi couple, their seven children and an elderly Egyptian man. Four of the activists also gave the group a ride to the nearest town, when they were stopped by border guards. Prosecutors charged the five activists, who’ve become known as the Hajnówka Five, under Article 264a § 1 of Poland’s Penal Code with facilitating unlawful stay for personal or material benefit. On Sept. 8, 2025, the District Court acquitted all five. Judge Adam Rodakowski determined that the provision required some gain to accrue to the accused and the activists had gained nothing.
Polish courts have reached similar conclusions in other cases. In May 2023, for example, the same court found that an Iraqi man who had travelled from Germany to help freezing relatives in October 2021 had not acted unlawfully. A study by the Szpila Collective and the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, both Polish NGOs, found that cases brought against activists in 2021 and 2022 were overwhelmingly discontinued or ended in acquittal. In September 2025, a volunteer known as Bartek, charged with influencing the official duties of the Polish Border Guard service after demanding access to a Somali client who was pushed back without his claim being registered, was acquitted, too. Yet an acquittal does not repair the damage. Investigations can remain open for years, consuming time and money while serving to intimidate anyone watching what may happen if they help.
Several serious cases remain open. Kamila M., one of the Hajnówka Five, was named a suspect in a separate investigation while her first trial was still underway. Prosecutors accuse her of organizing illegal crossings of the Polish border by helping arrange routes and transportation. Karolina M., a humanitarian worker, was charged by Polish prosecutors with organizing the movement of at least 15 people from Poland into Germany. She denies the charge and says she was providing humanitarian assistance. Activists familiar with the case say officers searched her home, seized electronic devices, and questioned her for about nine hours. Ewa M., a humanitarian worker arrested in 2023 and initially held in pretrial detention, is accused of leading a criminal group that organized unlawful crossings, an offense carrying up to 10 years in prison.
Portraying All Assistance as Suspicious
“When humanitarian cases are mixed together with smuggling cases, it becomes easier to portray all assistance as suspicious,” Aleksandra Chrzanowska of the Warsaw-based Association for Legal Intervention told us. Her organization provides legal and integration assistance to migrants and refugees. Ola Ziemiańska of Szpila, a Polish collective providing legal and psychological support to activists, described three patterns of repression: first, pressure through fines and misdemeanor proceedings, then high-profile prosecutions meant to intimidate a movement, and now the targeting of people seen as central organizers. Investigations can lie dormant for years and be revived when it is most politically beneficial, she said. She expects Karolina M.’s case to resurface during the 2027 national election campaign. The pressure does not come only from the courtroom. Mateusz Rybak was 14 when he began helping people stranded in the border forests. Now 18, he continues to volunteer there. As a result, he has been the target of death threats and abusive messages. Schoolmates once threatened to break his legs so he could no longer go to the forest. He faces online abuse regularly, and more recently, someone created and circulated pornographic deepfakes depicting him, and he plans to take legal action. He uses his social media following as a form of protection. “If people know who I am and are watching what happens to me, it’s harder to target me quietly,” he said. Grupa Granica, an association of activists and NGOs providing aid at the border, and its members also routinely receive threatening comments on social media.
Cuts to humanitarian funding, including the suspension of funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration eliminated last year, have squeezed local groups. The drop in the number of crossings has also made it harder to sustain donor attention to the work that continues. Groups need to stay ready in case numbers rise again, and they are trying to support migrants already in Poland through asylum proceedings that run for years. “Donors will fund a crisis, but the work that comes afterwards is less attractive,” said Ania Romaniuk, integration advisor at EGALA Association, an NGO based in Białystok in north-eastern Poland, which provides Polish-language lessons for refugees and helps them find work, housing, schools, and medical care.
Five years after the border migration crisis began as a gambit by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to sow chaos in the European Union, the border is quieter and receives far less international attention. But activists and NGOs are still there. Poland’s government should stop making their work harder, and its international partners should stop looking away. Pursuing people who save lives wastes public resources, compounds suffering at the border, and undermines Poland’s own human rights commitments.
