Afghan migrants in Poland fear forced deportations as asylum applications remain suspended

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Afghan migrants in Poland face forced deportations and fear for their lives at the hands of the Taliban-run government back home, concerns that rights groups say have soared after Poland last year moved to partially suspend the right to seek asylum.

Rights groups warn the measure, introduced in March 2025, is now being overused by authorities. It's based on an amended Polish law that imposed temporary restrictions on the right to apply for international protection at the border with Belarus for those who crossed into the NATO and European Union member state illegally.

“I tried more than a billion times to seek safety,” an Afghan in his 20s, currently in a detention center for migrants in eastern Poland, said over the phone. He recounted how the Taliban killed his father, and also detained and beat him up.

The rest of his family is still in hiding in Afghanistan, he said, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he fears for his safety, should he be deported to Afghanistan.

All this he recounted to Polish authorities, he said, "but they did not care.”

The Polish Interior Ministry did not respond to AP requests for comment about the deportations of Afghans and how it applies the new restriction.

A dangerous route

Like many of his countrymen, the young Afghan crossed into EU-member Poland from Belarus and managed to reach Germany, where he was arrested and then returned to Poland to have his asylum request assessed under EU laws.

He now says Polish authorities decided to deport him without properly reviewing his case, simply because he had first entered the country by way of Belarus — a fraught route that Warsaw has sought to crack down on after tens of thousands of migrants tried to enter the EU that way in recent years.

Poland says it's been overwhelmed by the influx and argues that the migrants were sent by Russia and its ally Belarus to destabilize Poland and other Western countries.

The temporary suspension — for a total of 60 days — of the right to seek asylum only applies “on the border with Belarus," the new legislation says. The government has prolonged this time period multiple times, effectively suspending asylum applications for over a year and more.

A complex legal issue

Legal experts such as the Polish Ombudsman, which protects civil and human rights in Poland, and the UNHCR have criticized Poland's suspension of the right to asylum.

They say it's incompatible with international law and especially the Geneva Conventions on refugee rights, which obliges receiving countries to examine each individual's claim for protection.

Poland's liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said the security risks at the Belarus border warranted the new measures, an argument the EU did not reject though its member states are required to provide at least a minimum of rights to asylum-seekers even in cases of orchestrated migration crises.

Since the new law was introduced, rights groups and migrants say Poland has been stretching the measure to include not just migrants apprehended on the Belarus-Polish border but those found anywhere in the country — as long as they entered across that border.

In practice, this means that Afghan migrants, whose route to Poland almost always involves Belarus, cannot apply for asylum, regardless of their individual circumstances.

Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights Michael O’Flaherty in a letter, dated April 1 and published Tuesday, to the Polish government expressed his concerns that asylum applications are "suspended in every case in which border guards consider that the person has crossed the Poland-Belarus border irregularly.”

“In this regard, I note information about the recent removal of a group of Afghan nationals from Poland to Afghanistan, who were not provided with an opportunity to lodge asylum applications,” O’Flaherty wrote.

The legal grey area has apparently even made Frontex, the EU border control agency, uncomfortable. Its monitors pulled out from a government-organized deportation flight to Pakistan last year after learning that Polish authorities had not properly assessed the asylum applications of those being deported.

“We have to make sure that people that are returned have fully gone through the entire asylum procedure as per EU law,” said Krzysztof Borowski, spokesperson for Frontex.

Afghans at risk

The young migrant interviewed by the AP is among some 120 Afghans currently in detention centers in Poland. A friend of his, he claimed, was recently deported by Poland back to Afghanistan. His family has not heard from him since.

About 65% of Afghans asking for asylum receive protection in Europe, according to the EU Agency for Asylum, which indicates their applications are mostly successful elsewhere in the bloc.

Tomasz Sieniow, from the nongovernmental Foundation Institute for the Rule of Law, was aboard a flight last Friday that Polish authorities were using to deport nine Afghans back home via Uzbekistan.

He told the AP that the European Court of Human Rights had issued rulings asking Poland not to deport the nine, but that authorities subsequently only took six of the Afghans off the flight.

Sieniow said that most Afghans detained in Poland had worked with the previous, U.S.-allied Afghan government that collapsed when the Taliban overran Afghanistan in August 2021, or with the U.S. or other NATO troops.

These people, and their families, “should not be removed," said the NGO worker and added that “Poland never analyzed their reasons for asking for protection.”

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