Border guards continue to detect third-country nationals, asylum seekers, attempting to leave Latvia illegally by air.
On Thursday, February 15, at the „Riga” Airport Border Control Point, during immigration control and person profiling two Indian citizens, who presented another person travel documents to border guards, were detected. During the interview, the persons admitted that they wanted to travel via Finland to Spain. Criminal proceedings have been initiated against the persons under Article 281(1) of the Criminal Law for concealing personal identity in the course of residing in the Republic of Latvia using the personal identity document of another person.
It should be noted that this year border guards have already detected 17 attempts by persons to use the situation that border checks are not carried out at the internal borders of Schengen States to travel to other EU Member States with forged or another person documents. The majority of cases have been detected at the „Riga” Airport Border Control Point, where 11 persons have so far attempted to leave Latvia for France, Belgium and Finland with forged or another person documents. Such cases have also been detected at the ports of Ventspils and Liepaja, where asylum seekers have attempted to leave for Germany.
Also, 31 asylum seekers have been detected at the Schengen terminal this year trying to leave Latvia without valid travel documents, i.e. only with Asylum Seekers' Documents.
It has already been reported that this trend clearly shows that a large number of third-country nationals who have previously illegally crossed the Latvian-Belarusian border or have been admitted for humanitarian reasons are applying for asylum in Latvia but do not intend to stay here in the long term. These persons abuse the asylum procedure because Latvia is only a transit country and their final destination is other EU Member States.
According to the information available to the State Border Guard, this year 73 third-country nationals have already arbitrarily left the Asylum Seekers' Centres, compared to last year when the number of such cases was 1 529.
Although no border checks are carried out at internal borders, in order to prevent illegal crossing of the state border, the border guards intensify profiling of passengers at the Schengen terminal of the „Riga” Airport Border Control Point, as well as at the seaports of Riga, Liepaja and Ventspils, and carry out immigration controls elsewhere in the vicinity of the internal borders.