Estonia says migration pressure poses no reason for panic

Estonia is sending another border guard unit to the Latvia-Belarus border as dozens of people who entered illegally through Belarus have been found in Estonia, ERR reported. The Police and Border Guard Board said authorities were working effectively both at the borders and inside the country.

Estonia’s unit will spend two months helping Latvia, where illegal migration pressure is currently greatest. Veiko Kommusaar, deputy director general for border management at the Police and Border Guard Board, said the latest rotation would leave for Latvia on Monday morning.

“The centre of the migration attack is currently directed towards Latvia, and in addition to us, colleagues from Finland and Lithuania are also helping their Latvian counterparts,” Kommusaar told Vikerraadio’s Vikerhommik programme.

He said the assistance was intended to strengthen the European Union’s external border and keep threats outside the bloc. Kommusaar added that there was currently no indication that the pressure at the Latvia-Belarus border would soon end.

Although Latvia is facing the main pressure, migrants who entered Estonia illegally have also been detained in the country. In the past two weeks, authorities have caught 81 people who arrived via Belarus, most of them from African countries, Kommusaar said.

“They are being organised through intermediaries to continue from here to other countries,” he said. Estonia plans to transfer the first detainees to Latvia this week, as Latvian authorities already have established channels for returning them to the places where their journeys began.

The Police and Border Guard Board is also targeting human traffickers. Three people suspected of organising the migrants’ onward movement for criminal profit were taken into custody last week, Kommusaar said.

Authorities say there is no reason for panic

Questions about public safety have arisen after residents in Nõmme reported seeing a group of strangers in an apartment building. Kommusaar said there was no reason for concern but thanked residents for reporting suspicious movements.

“There is certainly no reason for panic today, and we are very grateful to people who report suspicious movements to us,” he said. Large groups moving together are not usual and may indicate that the people do not have all the required documents. They arrived by routes that were not legal, he said, adding that individual migrants were not a reason for residents to panic.

Kommusaar said it was a real possibility that migration pressure could eventually be directed straight at the Estonian-Russian border. Similar attempts to cross the border were made at Estonian and Finnish border checkpoints several years ago, he said, adding that the threat still exists.

According to Kommusaar, those behind such operations have both the technical means and enough people to organise similar attempts in the future at either Estonia’s or Finland’s borders.