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When the Tusk government came to office in December, many activists had been hoping it would bring a new approach to the Belarusian border situation, especially as the parties that make up the coalition previously criticised Law and Justice (PiS) for its handling of the migration crisis since 2021.

That crisis was initially fomented by the Belarusian regime, which over the last three years has lured tens of thousands of migrants mainly from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa to Minsk, bussed them to its borders with the EU, and herded them towards the border. In the last year and a half, migrants have increasingly arrived first in Russia before moving westwards, highlighting Russias involvement in creating this new migratory Eastern Borders Route.

As if to signal a change in direction, Prime Minister Tusk appointed an academic specialising in migration, Maciej Duszczyk, to the post of deputy interior minister in charge of the matter. Duszczyk not only began work on a much-needed comprehensive migration policy for the country, but also announced an end to what he called non-humanitarian pushbacks.

I assure you that the Border Guard no longer conducts pushbacks like those seen under Law and Justice since 2023, Duszczyk told Gazeta Wyborcza in an interview in early 2024, shortly after his appointment. As a migration researcher, I have seen films with pushbacks conducted in a very non-humanitarian way. Such actions cannot take place in a democratic state that respects human rights.

In March, the Polish Border Guard set up so-called search-and-rescue teams, formed to seek out and assist migrants whose life and health might be in danger on the border.

Yet according to Katarzyna Czarnota of the Helskinski Foundation for Human Rights, there is a legitimate risk that the setting up of these search-and-rescue teams actually increases the number of migrants being disappeared on the Polish-Belarusian border, referring to those migrants who are pushed back, die or their fate becomes unknown.

Czarnota told BIRN that based on observations by activists at the border, Polish officials whether from the search-and-rescue teams or regular border guards might indeed now be more open to searching for migrants than during the time of the previous PiS government. However, upon finding them, beyond checking their vitals, the conduct remains the same: if the migrant is considered stable enough, he or she is taken back across the border, regardless of nationality, age or having expressed a clear intent to apply for asylum in Poland.

As a consequence, beyond the lives potentially saved, the number of migrants detected and pushed back could actually be higher than before the setting up of the teams, Czarnota suggests.

Despite many appeals by human rights groups, the Tusk cabinet has yet to repeal the so-called border regulation of the Ministry of Interior and Administration, passed by PiS in 2021, that claims to legalise pushbacks in Poland, but which legal experts and the Polish Ombudsman argue is contrary to national and international law protecting the right to asylum, and thus illegal.

The new Polish government conducts humanitarian pushbacks, Czarnota drily noted, repeating a common wordplay used by Polish activists.

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Poland's New Government Continues Migrant Pushbacks on Belarus Border - Balkan Insight