More than 11,000 migrants entered Germany without permission via Belarus and Poland in 2021, although the trend was clearly downwards by the end of the year, according to police data.
As of Wednesday, the German Federal Police registered a total of 11,213 unauthorized entries for the entire year.
The German-Polish border was the main point of entry, police said on Thursday, noting that a particularly large number of migrants entered the eastern state of Brandenburg via Poland.
Since the middle of the year, the number of migrants on the Belarus route has risen rapidly.
The European Union believes this is a deliberate policy of Belarusian strongman Alexander Lukashenko.
In September, 2,049 migrants entered Germany illegally. In October, the number peaked at 5,294. In November, it fell to 2,849.
According to the federal police, 521 illegal entries into Germany with a connection to Belarus have been detected so far in December.
In the late summer, so many people from Iraq, Syria and other crisis countries arrived at the central reception centre in the Brandenburg border town of Eisenhüttenstadt that heated tents had to be used at times in addition to the regular accommodation.
Brandenburg had asked the federal government for support so that the refugees could be distributed more quickly among the federal states.
A new registration centre for migrants in Frankfurt an der Oder, also on the Polish border, has been operating since November.
