Two illegal migrants from Afghanistan who hid in a truck full of watermelons imported from Greece were detained at the Polish-Slovak border, according to Polish border police.
According to police, the two illegal migrants had reportedly paid €4,000 each for the trip.
They were stopped by Poland’s border guards and are currently being detained at a center for illegal aliens. The court in the town of Sanok has since ordered them to be held for three months in Białystok in the east of Poland.
The migrants were first discovered after the Polish driver of the truck had heard some suspicious noises coming from the rear and informed the officers about them.
The officers had been in the area patrolling the border as a result of the coronavirus-related closures. Upon searching the truck, they soon uncovered two Afghani citizens, with the men aged 18 and 41.
Both migrants were well-prepared for the journey with warm clothes, food and several hundred euros each in their pockets. The police said they were in good health.
According major Elżbieta Pikor, the officer of the Polish Border Guard who briefed journalists, the migrants were both convinced that they had arrived in Germany when they were detained. Instead, they were in Poland, which has harsher asylum rules than Germany’s.
One of the men had already filed for refugee status in Greece.
The briefing officer stated that since the beginning of 2020, border security has stopped 40 illegal migrants who had entered Poland’s borders with Ukraine and Slovakia.
Most of the detained migrants were intending to use Poland as a place of transit on the way to Western Europe.
Recently, Polish border police have also arrested 4 ISIS members from Tajikistan at the Polish border who were planning attacks in Western Europe.
