Latvia asks Lithuania to send 10-15 border guards to deal with illegal migration

VILNIUS - Latvia has asked Lithuania to send 10-15 border guards to help it fight illegal migration on its border with Belarus.

"Latvia has asked for 10-15 officers. And this is the number we are considering. At the moment we are looking at who could go," Lina Laurinaityte of the Lithuanian State Border Guard Service told BNS on Monday, adding that mostly Lithuanian border guards serving on the Russian border would be sent to Latvia.

"Another important point is that most of the officers will come from the Lithuanian-Russian border where the situation may not be so intense at the moment, and the officers themselves will benefit from gaining new experience in Latvia as it is currently still facing the problem of illegal migration," the SBGS spokeswoman said.

The plan is to send cynologists and criminal intelligence officers, she added.

Earlier in the day, SBGS Commander Rustamas Liubajevas told the pubic radio LRT that Lithuania and Estonia would send officers to assist their Latvian counterparts from August 5.

Poland is now the country facing the highest inflow of illegal migrants, followed by Latvia, he said.

SVGS data shows, slightly more than 350 illegal migrants were prevented from entering Lithuania from Belarus from January 1 until July 26. Meanwhile, Latvia recorded over 3,000 attempts to cross the border illegally, and Poland recorded 21,000 such cases.

The SBGS chief also pointed out that Lithuania is facing the problem of so-called secondary migration where foreigners enter Lithuania after illegally crossing the Latvian border.

"We are now facing the problem of so-called secondary migration when illegal migrants are taken across from the Latvian-Belarusian border through the territory of Lithuania, and there are a lot of such cases. This year we have identified more than 200 persons and handed them back to Latvian border guards," Liubajevas said.

Lithuania also sent 20 border guards to Latvia in the fall of 2023.