Over the past week, police have detained foreign nationals who entered the country without a legal basis in several Tallinn districts and near the Latvian border. Police learned of them through reports from local residents as well as information gathered by officers.

Five of the 46 migrants were apprehended in Pärnu County. At around 11 p.m. last Saturday, officers from Pärnu Police Station, together with Finnish border guards, were carrying out checks under Schengen compensatory measures at the former Ikla border crossing when they stopped a vehicle with Latvian license plates driven by a 54-year-old Romanian man.

While an Estonian police officer was speaking with the driver, a Finnish border guard noticed something unusual behind the luggage on the back seat.

"At first, it appeared that the driver was the only person in the vehicle, but an observant colleague spotted a human hand among the luggage. During a further inspection, we discovered five foreign nationals in the vehicle who had tried to hide themselves," said Margo Peters, head of the border and migration supervision unit at the Western Prefecture.

It emerged that, in addition to the Romanian man, the vehicle contained five people of South Asian origin who had entered Estonia illegally from Belarus via Latvia.

The migrants are now being held at a detention center in Tallinn, while the Romanian citizen has been remanded in custody with court authorization. Criminal proceedings have been opened against him under a section of the Penal Code concerning the illegal transportation of a foreign national across the state border of the Republic of Estonia.

"The criminal investigation will establish the exact route the foreign nationals took to Estonia, but preliminary information indicates that they were sent to Latvia from a camp in Belarus. Based on the evidence gathered so far, the Romanian suspect picked them up in a passenger car in Latvia, concealed them and instructed them to keep their heads down. This indicates that the suspect knew he was transporting the foreign nationals into Estonia illegally and that he would face criminal punishment if caught," prosecutor Keili Tiirik said.

Nearly 50 criminal investigations have been opened this year in connection with the illegal transportation of foreign nationals across Estonia's border. Five people have been remanded in custody on suspicion of illegally transporting foreign nationals across the state border.

Since July, police have detained 187 foreign nationals who entered Estonia illegally. To date, 72 people who reached Estonia via Belarus and Latvia and had no legal basis to remain in Estonia have been handed over to Latvia.

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