A total of three incidents happened in the last twenty four hours. The first one occurred at 7:05 AM by Viļaka, where seven citizens of Afghanistan and five Latvian human traffickers were detained after mounting a chase with trained dogs and a helicopter. The Afghan citizens applied to become asylum seekers after being detained.
The second incident was similar, with seven Vietnamese citizens being arrested, along with a smuggler who is a Russian citizen. They were chased from 6:05 PM for a total of two hours with five trained dogs and a helicopter.
But in the Daugavpils district a total of ten Vietnamese citizens were detained, with the first five found 20 minutes after the alarm was sounded at 12 AM. A Russian smuggler who came here from Estonia was arrested after a two hour chase, along with five Vietnamese citizens.
Criminal proceedings have been started in all cases.
As of now, 222 illegal immigrants and 44 human traffickers have been detained this year. This is a steep increase from 2014 when the numbers for the whole year were 139 and 19 respectively.
