Federal police stop smuggling of refugees

Federal police apprehended numerous illegally entered refugees in the Elbe Valley and Eastern Ore Mountains over the weekend. On Sunday alone, there were 144 migrants in the area of the federal police inspection Berggießhübel - people from Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya and Syria. During the checks, officers were also able to arrest a smuggler from Ukraine, the inspection said Monday. The 29-year-old was apprehended in Bad Schandau with 17 refugees aboard a van. The Dresden district court has meanwhile issued an arrest warrant against him, the man is in custody, it said.

The Bautzen CDU member of the state parliament Marko Schiemann spoke of a dramatic situation at the federal external border. "It can not be that criminal gangs of organized crime determine who enters Germany. We do not need a new structure or analysis of the police now, but a significant increase in personnel so that the criminal activity of smugglers is stopped," he told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur. At the border with Poland and the Czech Republic alone, he said, at least 800 police officers are temporarily needed to take decisive action against smugglers.

"In this dramatic situation, the EU Schengen system has long ceased to function and must be temporarily suspended," Schiemann said. "The resumption of stationary border controls is long overdue. A stop sign must finally be put to the misanthropic actions of people smugglers." The federal government must act now,