Thousands march against immigration in Warsaw

Thousands of people joined a “March Against Immigration” in Warsaw on Saturday, including figures from the national-conservative opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party.

The demonstration took place just eight days before the first round of Poland’s presidential election. Immigration has played a major part in the campaign, with Poland’s two main political groups each accusing one another of being too soft on the issue.

Saturday’s event was organised by nationalist leader Robert Bąkiewicz, a former PiS parliamentary candidate and also previously the main organiser of the Independence March that takes place in Warsaw each November.

“We, as a nation, do not agree to this social engineering project that has destroyed the countries of western Europe and Scandinavia,” Bąkiewicz told the crowd on Saturday. “We do not agree to the attacks, murders, rapes that have become everyday life for the residents of Paris, Madrid and London.”

Bąkiewicz and his allies, including leading PiS figures, have already held a number of demonstrations aimed in particular against returns by Germany of migrants and asylum seekers who have entered unlawfully from Poland.

“Germany is now waging a hybrid war against Poland, by dumping migrants on us,” Bąkiewicz told broadcaster wPolsce24 on Saturday. He said that this was being done “in exactly the same way” as Belarus and Russia have been sending migrants to Poland over the eastern border.

Participants in Saturday’s march held banners saying “No to migrants from Germany”, “I want to feel safe in my own country”, and “Stop the invasion”. Many chants and banners also attacked the current government, a coalition led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk, blaming them for migration.

That message was echoed by PiS figures who attended the event. Their party has long claimed that Tusk represents German interests rather than Polish ones.

“Thousands of Polish patriots under the chancellery of the German Tusk!” wrote PiS MP Janusz Kowalski on X during the march. “No to illegal immigration!”

Speaking to the crowd alongside Bąkiewicz, former PiS education minister Przemysław Czarnek declared that the way to “save Poland” from immigration was to prevent Rafał Trzaskowski, the presidential candidate of Tusk’s centrist Civic Platform (PO) party, from being elected next week.

However, PO has argued that it was, in fact, PiS that was responsible for allowing uncontrolled immigration during its years in power from 2015 to 2023, when Poland experienced the biggest wave of migration in its history and one of the largest in Europe during that period.

Tusk’s government has launched investigations into corruption and other failings in the visa system that they say allowed large numbers of immigrants who had not been properly vetted to enter the country.

It has also sought to strengthen physical and electronic barriers on the border with Belarus, arguing that PiS failed to properly defend that border from the tens of thousands of migrants – mainly from the Middle East, Asia and Africa – that have tried to cross with the help and encouragement of the Belarusian authorities.

Bąkiewicz and PiS’s anger has been directed in particular against returns of migrants and asylum seekers from Germany. Data obtained last month by Polish media showed that, between January 2024 and February 2025, 11,000 such returns took place.

However, while PiS has claimed that this is a growing problem, the data showed that, over that 14-month period, the number of returns actually fell.

Meanwhile, the number of asylum seekers returned by Germany to Poland under the EU’s Dublin Regulation was higher in 2023, when PiS was in office, than in 2024 under Tusk’s governing coalition.

As part of its immigration clampdown, Tusk’s government has suspended the right of people who cross the border from Belarus to claim asylum in Poland. That has been criticised as a violation of Polish and international law by many human rights groups, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Main image credit: Adam Stepien/Agencja Wyborcza.pl