Up to 30,000 Poles might be deported from US, Polish MFA says
Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has warned that US President Donald Trump's mass deportation of illegal immigrants may affect up to 30,000 Poles.
"We're trying to conduct a precise assessment, and we assume that this will be a maximum of a few tens of thousands of people," Henryka Moscicka-Dendys, a deputy minister at the MFA, told the TOK FM radio station on Friday. "We can assume that the number of these people can reach up to 30,000 from around the entire United States."
According to Moscicka-Dendys, the American federal immigration crackdown could concern Poles whose legal status may appear "atypical" in the general perception of illegal immigrants. The politician added that those may be people who moved to the US in the 1990s and did not take proper care of regulating their immigration status.
The statement comes a few days after Prime Minister Donald Tusk requested Poland's top diplomat, Radoslaw Sikorski, to prepare the US-based consulates for the possible mass deportation of Poles from the country.
"Countrymen whose passports have expired are welcome to apply for new documents," Sikorski wrote on the X platform on Tuesday, and added that "we will also establish additional consular duties outside consulate buildings."
On Monday, the day before Warsaw started bracing itself for a possible repatriation of its citizens, America's newly-appointed President Donald Trump signed a number of executive orders aimed to seal off his country from immigrants, ending birthright citizenship and declaring a state of emergency on the border with Mexico. (PAP)
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