For weeks more and more refugees have been coming to Germany via Poland, especially to Brandenburg.

What is the reason for this, Minister?

Markus Wehner

Political correspondent in Berlin.

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It is an organized smuggling route that starts from Belarus.

The ruler there, Aleksandr Lukashenko, has issued visa exemption for around one hundred states in the past few months.

Most of them are countries in the Middle East and Africa.

Migrants are specifically recruited to bring them via Minsk to the border with Latvia, Lithuania and, above all, Poland.

You should then try to get into the European Union somehow.

This wave of refugees has grown considerably since the end of August.

We now count around 130 refugees who come to Brandenburg alone every day.

Why do the refugees mainly come to Brandenburg?

The major motorway connections go to Brandenburg.

We also have the longest border with Poland.

But migrants also come to Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

What do the refugees who come to Germany report?

They unanimously report that some of them came to Belarus via Russia on charter planes or scheduled flights.

There they were immediately brought to the eastern border by truck or bus.

They also report on the prices they had to pay.

They are between 5000 and well over 10,000 euros per person.

As the interior minister of Brandenburg, what are you doing to master the situation at the border?

In August we started to expand the accommodation capacities at the initial reception center in Eisenhüttenstadt because it was foreseeable that this influx would increase. We were therefore able to ensure orderly and humane first aid for the arriving people. But our capacities are not infinite. I am therefore grateful to Federal Minister of the Interior Seehofer that he has pledged support. From the beginning of November we will be introducing the “Rosenheim Model” on the German-Polish border, which was developed in response to the wave of refugees in Bavaria in 2015. All incoming migrants are treated centrally by the federal government. First of all, everyone is subject to a security check by the federal police. This enables us to prevent terrorists from entering the country. Then follow corona test,First aid and health check. The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees then immediately distributes the migrants to the federal states. That relieves Brandenburg enormously because we only have to take care of the migrants, for whom we are partly responsible.

Some politicians are calling for border controls to be introduced at the German-Polish border.

What do you make of it?

The federal police have been checking the border area with Poland for weeks with an additional eight hundred.

They carry out random border controls, pick up people smugglers and take care of migrants who are stranded or discovered somewhere.

What else should be done?