Lithuanian border guards detain five migrants at Vilnius airport

Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service detained five irregular migrants at Vilnius Airport over the weekend as they tried to fly to France and Germany, LRT reported. The migrants, from Algeria, Egypt and Morocco, are expected to be returned to Latvia, where they had illegally entered Lithuania.

The passengers were planning to fly to Nice in France or Berlin in Germany. None had visas or residence permits allowing them to stay in Lithuania, or documents confirming their citizenship and identity.

However, the migrants had digital boarding passes on their mobile phones, along with photographs of asylum seeker identification documents issued by a Latvian foreigners registration centre.

Three migrants who planned to fly to Nice were taken to official premises at the airport’s border control post. Border guards determined that the documents had been issued by Latvian authorities to Algerian nationals aged 23 and 25 and a 21-year-old Moroccan national.

According to preliminary information, the three had flown from North African countries to Belarus, crossed the border illegally and reached Latvia, where they were detained. They applied for asylum but left an asylum seeker accommodation centre in Latvia before a decision had been made, planning to reach France by air from Vilnius.

The State Border Guard Service detained the migrants and soon transferred them to its Foreigners’ Registration Centre in Pabradė.

The other two migrants, Egyptian nationals aged 20 and 26, had planned to fly to Berlin. They had left without permission from the Muceniekai asylum seeker accommodation centre near Riga and travelled by train from Riga to Vilnius on Saturday.

Passengers on flights within the European Union are usually not checked, but border guards carry out selective checks based on risk profiling.