"Here is some more insider information for you. They are silent, they don't say anything. Based on the Polish data over this time, since the beginning of the year, the borders through Belarus and other borders too, but especially through Belarus, do you know how many migrants have entered there, who were once, if you remember, kept in a warehouse? 7 thousand people. They remain silent. How do they tell? People would ask: you have built a wall, why did 7 thousand people get through the wall? This number is for the beginning of August, there are more now. They come mostly from the south, from Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya. But I’m referring to the Polish data".
On August 6, the Border Guard Service in Poland tweeted the following:
"On 5 August, 9 foreigners, including those from Iraq, Iran and Egypt, tried to enter the territory illegally. 4 Syrian citizens swam across the Svisloch river to the Bobrowniki border guard post. In August, there were 153 of such attempts at the Polish-Belarusian border, 7.143 this year, and 39.664 last year".
So this report referred to attempts to cross the border, not the number of people who crossed it. The newspaper “Wyborcza” once even asked the border guards what they consider to be an attempt to cross the border.
"According to the border guards’ explanations, this includes, for example, actions when someone was standing on the Belarusian side of the border and was warned by Polish border guards not to cross it, so he had to leave. So this attempt counts, even if that person hasn’t yet set foot on the border," the newspaper wrote.
Moreover, one person can get into the statistics several times by trying to cross it in different places. According to the Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, almost 3 thousand people entered the EU illegally across the entire eastern border in the first six months. This is a third less than a year ago.
The border with Belarus is only a small piece of it. But it is possible that it was the construction of the fence in Lithuania and Poland that reduced the number of immigrants. After all, these were the destinations where most attempts to cross the border illegally were recorded last year.
The Polish border guards themselves claim that after the fence was built, the number of attempts to cross the border illegally decreased. There used to be 800 a day, but now there are 80 at most.