WARSAW, Poland — Afghan refugees living in Poland are confronting the possibility of forced removal to their homeland, where they fear persecution under Taliban rule, as the country continues to block asylum applications that were supposed to be temporarily suspended.
Human rights organizations warn that Polish officials are misapplying legislation enacted in March 2025, which was designed to temporarily limit asylum requests at the Belarus border for individuals who entered the NATO and EU nation without authorization.
“I tried more than a billion times to seek safety,” said a young Afghan man in his twenties, currently held at a migrant detention facility in eastern Poland during a phone interview. He described how Taliban forces murdered his father and also captured and assaulted him.
His remaining family members continue to live in hiding within Afghanistan, he explained to The Associated Press under anonymity due to concerns about his security if forced to return to his country.
He told Polish officials about these experiences, he noted, “but they did not care.”
The Polish Interior Ministry has not responded to AP inquiries regarding Afghan deportations and the implementation of the new limitations.
Similar to other Afghans, this young man entered Poland through Belarus and successfully reached Germany, where authorities arrested him before sending him back to Poland for asylum processing under European Union regulations.
He claims Polish officials have chosen to remove him without thoroughly examining his situation, solely because he initially arrived through Belarus — a dangerous pathway that Warsaw has attempted to restrict after thousands of migrants used this route to enter the EU in recent years.
Polish officials state they have been overwhelmed by the massive influx and contend that Russia and Belarus deliberately sent these migrants to undermine Poland and other Western nations.
The temporary halt — initially set for 60 days — on asylum rights applies specifically “on the border with Belarus,” according to the new law. However, the government has extended this timeframe repeatedly, essentially blocking asylum requests for more than a year.
Legal authorities including Poland’s Ombudsman, responsible for protecting civil and human rights, along with the UNHCR, have condemned Poland’s asylum suspension.
These organizations argue it violates international law, particularly the Geneva Conventions regarding refugee protections, which require host nations to evaluate each person’s individual protection claim.
Poland’s liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk has defended the security concerns at the Belarus border as justification for these policies, an argument the EU has not dismissed, though member nations must still guarantee minimum rights to asylum seekers during orchestrated migration emergencies.
Following the law’s implementation, advocacy groups and migrants report that Poland has expanded the measure beyond those caught at the Belarus-Polish border to include anyone found throughout the country — provided they entered via that border.
This effectively prevents Afghan migrants, whose journey to Poland typically involves Belarus, from requesting asylum regardless of their personal situations.
Michael O’Flaherty, the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights, wrote to Polish leadership in a letter dated April 1 and released Tuesday, expressing concern that asylum requests 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 stated.
This legal uncertainty has apparently troubled even Frontex, the EU’s border control agency. Its observers withdrew from a government-organized deportation flight to Pakistan last year after discovering that Polish authorities had failed to properly evaluate the asylum applications of those being removed.
“We have to make sure that people that are returned have fully gone through the entire asylum procedure as per EU law,” explained Krzysztof Borowski, Frontex spokesperson.
The young migrant who spoke with the AP represents one of approximately 120 Afghans currently detained in Polish facilities. He claims a friend was recently deported by Poland back to Afghanistan, and his family has received no communication since.
Roughly 65% of Afghans seeking asylum obtain protection in Europe, according to the EU Agency for Asylum, suggesting their applications generally succeed elsewhere in the bloc.
Tomasz Sieniow from the nongovernmental Foundation Institute for the Rule of Law was present on a flight last Friday that Polish authorities used to deport nine Afghans home via Uzbekistan.
He informed the AP that the European Court of Human Rights had issued orders requesting Poland not to deport the nine individuals, but authorities subsequently removed only six Afghans from the flight.
Sieniow explained that most detained Afghans in Poland had collaborated with the former U.S.-allied Afghan government that fell when the Taliban seized control of Afghanistan in August 2021, or had worked with American or other NATO forces.
These individuals and their families “should not be removed,” the NGO worker stated, adding that “Poland never analyzed their reasons for asking for protection.”
