Border guards increasingly detect third-country nationals, asylum seekers who attempt to use air traffic for illegal departure from Latvia, the State Border Guard said on January 19.

In recent months, 26 asylum seekers have been detained at the border inspection post of Riga Airport, who were attempting to travel to other Member States of the European Union, mainly France, Germany, or the Netherlands, by means of false or foreign documents.

Also, several dozen asylum seekers have been detected at the Schengen terminal trying to leave Latvia without valid travel documents, namely only with asylum seekers' documents.

According to the border guard's assessment, a large proportion of third-country nationals who have previously crossed the Latvian-Belarusian State border illegally or been admitted for humanitarian reasons and request asylum in Latvia 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 Member States of the European Union.

Although border checks are not carried out at internal borders, border guards, to prevent illegal crossing of the State border, shall intensify the profiling of passengers both at the Schengen terminal of the border inspection post of Riga airport and at the sea ports of Riga and Ventspils, as well as implement immigration control elsewhere in the vicinity of internal borders.

According to the information at the disposal of the State border Guard, 39 third-country nationals have arbitrarily left asylum seeker centers this year, last year the number of such cases was 1529.