Germany said it will increase police patrols along “smuggling routes” on its border with Poland and the Czech Republic in an effort to prevent more migrants from entering the country.

Germany announced Wednesday that it is introducing border controls with neighbouring Poland and the Czech Republic this week to “limit human trafficking,” as the country faces fierce debate on its migration policy while asylum applications surge.

Police will carry out “additional flexible checks and mobile controls along the smuggling routes at the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic,” Interior Minister Nancy Faeser told the press.

The move comes as Germany has sought to prevent illegal migrants from entering the country and just a day after police raids across the country uncovered a migrant smuggling operation.

Faeser added that the new measures would be effective immediately, with the support of Polish and Czech authorities. She said the focus of the moves would be people smugglers, which she said facilitated the passage of a quarter of the migrants entering Germany.

“We must absolutely stop the smugglers’ cruel business because they put human lives at risk with maximum profit,” she said. “We want to prevent evasive movements of smugglers through flexible and mobile controls at changing locations.”

Faeser stressed, however, that the move did not mean fixed border checks would be established. The last time Germany did this was in 2015, when it set up border checks along its border with Austria, amid a surge in crossings. 

She said she did not “rule out” imposing fixed controls in the future if the new measures were not effective.

A recent surge in migrant arrivals has reignited the immigration debate in Germany and has put pressure on the country’s government, led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

German municipalities have urged the federal government to provide more funding to cope with the surge in migrant arrivals, pointing to stretched accommodation and services that seem similar to the events of 2015, when Germany took in over 1 million refugees mainly fleeing war in the Middle East.

Opposition parties in Germany have also called on the government to limit the number of asylum-seekers, with Bavaria’s conservative Premier Markus Söder suggesting an annual upper limit on asylum-seekers of 200,000.

Berlin has also been at odds with Italy over migration and the recent surge. It sought two weeks ago to suspend an agreement with Italy to take in some of its arrivals, accusing Rome of not honouring the long-contested rules dictating that asylum applications should be processed in the EU country of first arrival.

For its part, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni criticised Germany for allegedly financially supporting “non-governmental organisations engaged in the reception of irregular migrants on Italian territory and in rescues in the Mediterranean Sea.”

Both countries are still hoping to find solutions at the EU level, where a bid to reform the bloc’s migration and asylum policy has been stalled due to disagreements among the EU’s 27 members.