On Saturday afternoon, officers of the VSAT Vilnius Border Unit patrolling the capital’s airport checked two suspicious young foreigners at the Schengen departure terminal near the boarding gates. The men, who presented themselves as citizens of Somalia and France and were preparing to fly to Amsterdam, did not provide any identification documents.
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After the foreigners were taken to the border control point’s service premises, their mobile phones were inspected. Digital boarding passes with personal data were found on them: a 21-year-old Somali citizen and a 25-year-old French citizen. Both Africans admitted to arriving in Lithuania by car from Latvia, where they had entered illegally by climbing over a segment of the state border fence from Belarus.
After questioning, the “Frenchman” admitted that he was actually an Algerian citizen, who was advised by an unknown man before going to Latvia to get rid of his identification documents so that Lithuanian officers could not identify him.
The same day, the illegal migrants detained were handed over by the border guards to the officers of the VSAT Foreigners Registration Center. Later, they were accommodated at the PIIA Pabradė Reception Center under the Ministry of Social Security and Labour.
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Having illegally entered Latvia from Belarus, migrants often travel further west in groups ranging from a few to a dozen people, not only using the services of carriers but also traveling by route buses, trains, rideshare cars, planes, and even sea ferries with foreign or forged travel documents.
Compared to the previous situation, secondary migration flows from Latvia have increased significantly this year: in 2025 – 1,288, and this year alone in 7 months – 1,836. This phenomenon is related to illegal migrants who enter Latvia illegally from Belarus and later try to reach Western Europe, most often Germany, through Lithuania and Poland.
Illegal migrants traveling along the so-called Latvian route and detained, after clarifying the circumstances of the incident and completing the necessary procedures, are usually returned by Lithuanian border guards to their Latvian colleagues.
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