Poland has begun the construction of a €350 million border fence to help stem the tide of illegal migrants attempting to cross into the EU nation via Belarus.

Poland’s Straż Graniczna Border Guard announced that the construction of a new border wall along the Polish-Belarussian border to help prevent migrants from illegally entering the nation had commenced on the 25th of January 2022.

The border fence is planned to be five and a half metres high — five metres of “steel poles”, “topped with a coil of wire” — which the Straż Graniczna say will make it “impossible to pass”. The construction will stretch for 115 miles and will be equipped with motion detectors and cameras, to provide additional security measures and help the border guards catch illegals making an attempt to cross.

The building of Poland’s new border fence is predicted to cost 1.6 billion Polish zloty (£350 million, $395m) and the construction of the barrier is expected to be completed in June 2022.

Polish authorities have declined to specify the exact locations of where the border fence will be built, citing concerns about Belarus trying to disrupt the work.

“The Belarusian services are just waiting for this [the location of the border fence] to send groups of migrants there, so for security reasons we don’t indicate the precise locations”, said Captain Krystyna Jakimik-Jarosz, a spokesperson for the Polish Border Force, Euronews reports.

Over the last year the Polish Border Force has had fierce clashes with illegal migrants trying to cross the Belarusian border — at times having to deploy water cannons and tear gas to break up hostile crowds of migrants to prevent crossings. In some cases, those illegals have even been detected to have been armed with weapons, allegedly by the Belarusian forces.

Since the start of 2022, Poland has already blocked over 600 attempts of migrants trying to cross illegally into Poland from Belarus. In 2021 an estimated 17,300 migrants attempted to cross into Poland in October 2021 alone.

Poland and the European Union have accused Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko of attempting to weaponise the migrant crisis, and reports have surfaced that Belarus is “luring” desperate migrants to their nation from countries such as Iraq, only to then attempt to ship them to the European Union via state-sponsored “trafficking”.

Belarus has denied the allegations that they are enabling illegal crossings into the EU but also stated they will not prevent migrants from trying to illegally cross from Belarus into the European Union.

Polish politicians have taken a hard stance with illegal migration since the election of ultra-conservative President Andrzej Duda in 2015.

One of the most outspoken supporters of Poland’s tough borders is Polish Law and Justice MEP Dominik Tarczyński who when asked in an interview about Poland’s migration policy said:

“We don’t want any illegal migration in Poland, this is what we promised, this is why our government was elected and not even one Muslim illegal migrant will come to Poland, ever”.

“This is why Poland is so safe, not even one terrorist attack”, Tarczyński said in another interview.