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Nearly 20 illegal migrants repatriated from Lithuania in August

According to Deputy Interior Minister Arnoldas Abramavicius, if any of the migrants agree to return home, he or she will be able to take a plane already next day and receive an allowance of 300 euros

VILNIUS, August 17. /TASS/. Lithuania has sent nearly 20 illegal migrants from Asia and Africa back to their home countries who reached the republic from Belarus since early August, Deputy Interior Minister Arnoldas Abramavicius said on Tuesday.

"If any of the migrants agree to return home today, he or she will be able to take a plane already tomorrow and receive an allowance of 300 euros," he said. "So far nearly 20 people have taken this opportunity."

A Kenyan national was the first to be sent back home on August 2. The first from among the Iraqi migrants, who account for the majority of Lithuania’s 4,000 illegal migrants, was sent back to Iraq on August 12.

Evelina Gudzinskaite, director of the Lithuanian interior ministry’s migration department, said earlier in the day that most of the illegal migrants in Lithuania want to move further westwards in the European Union. "They don’t believe what our officials are saying that Lithuania will not let them into other EU countries and hope to be allowed to continue their way further on to the West at some time," she said.

More than 4,000 illegal migrants have been detained at the Lithuanian-Belarusian border since the beginning of the year, which is 50 times as many as in 2020. In late May, Lukashenko said that his country had served as a barrier to the flows of illegal migrants to Lithuania but, given the current ramped-up Western political pressure against Belarus, Minsk warned that it could stop performing this function.

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