Germany will tighten border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic to help fight human trafficking, the country’s interior minister said on Tuesday, as a wave of migration boosts support for the far-right ahead of local elections, Reuters reported.

The country took in about 1 million Ukrainian refugees last year, and the number of asylum applications unrelated to Ukraine has risen sharply. Local authorities say they are building new homes but are struggling to keep up with demand.

Concerns about migration have helped propel the far-right, anti-migrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party to second place in opinion polls nationally and to first place in the east of the country ahead of elections on October 8 in the states of Hesse and Bavaria.

In an interview with the Deutschlandfunk TV channel, Interior Minister Nancy Feser, a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), said that Germany will introduce stationary border controls with Poland and the Czech Republic.

“We will prepare stronger border controls to better fight human traffickers,” said Feiser, who is running in the Oct. 8 election to become premier of the state of Hesse.

Feser did not say when the new measures would be introduced. Politico reported that the new controls will be officially announced on Wednesday. The Interior Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

Germany has maintained permanent controls on Bavaria’s border with Austria since the 2015 European migration crisis, when more than 1 million migrants arrived, many of them fleeing war in the Middle East.

The chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, a conservative, was praised for her policies at the time. Critics say this has fueled the rise of the far-right AfD.

The AfD is now on course to win three regional elections in eastern Germany next year, with 32-35% there and 21% nationally.