Latvia found a second secret tunnel for migrants from Belarus

Latvian border guards on Thursday near Krāslava intercepted 28 people who crossed from Belarus through a tunnel covered with moss twenty meters from the border. All were returned across the border — without proceedings, without a judge, as an administrative act under paragraph 4 of the border guard law. Valsts robežsardze ↗ It is the second such tunnel in ten days and according to an internal Frontex analysis obtained by German newsrooms NDR and WDR, they are not dug without Minsk's knowledge. Tagesschau / NDR, WDR ↗

Fences were installed, so the route went underground

Poland, Lithuania and Latvia fenced their border sections with Belarus after 2021 and supplemented them with electronic surveillance. According to Frontex, it worked: in the first seven months of 2026, the agency recorded 3,209 illegal entries at the eastern external EU borders compared to 5,775 last year, thus 44 percent fewer. These are preliminary data as of August 4. Frontex ↗ However, the same analysis notes that "the migration pressure that Belarus uses as a tool has not diminished". Only the method changed — and according to the agency, "tunnels have become one of the options". Tagesschau / NDR, WDR ↗

Lithuania's authorities found five of them this year alone. Three were used by at least 86 people from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and India, two were discovered while still being dug. Lithuanian border guards measured ground vibrations at one of them and called Polish colleagues from the Podlasie section with special tunnel detection equipment. After drilling through the patrol strip and digging, they encountered at a depth of about 1.5 meters a corridor about a meter in diameter that extended five meters into Lithuanian territory and had no exit. VSAT ↗

In three weeks, 350 kilometers northward

The findings can be placed on a map and a line emerges. At the end of July, tunnels stood in the south of the Lithuanian-Belarusian border, near the villages of Piesčiai in Varėna district and Pertakas in Lazdijai district. Three weeks later, two Latvian ones appeared, the first on August 10 near Skrudaliene in the Silene section, the second on August 20 near Kaplava near Krāslava.

Latvia

1. August 20Kaplava near Krāslava28 people passed through, tunnel covered with mossopen map
2. August 10Silene, Skrudaliena15 people passed through, first discovery in the countryopen map

257 km

Lithuania

1. end of JulyPiesčiai, Varėna districtno surface exit, filled inopen map
2. JulyPertakas, Lazdijai districtunfinished, ~20 men retreated to Belarusopen map

↑ north

Between the Lithuanian and Latvian pair is a distance as the crow flies of 257 to 313 kilometers. Within each pair, however, there is only 31 and 39 kilometers, so it is not a dispersal along the entire border, but two tight clusters separated by 350 kilometers and three weeks. This fits the Frontex formulation as well: the most attempts to leave Belarus are now registered toward Latvia and significantly fewer toward Lithuania and Poland.

The Latvian side confirms this with numbers. In the first eight months of the year, it stopped nearly 10,000 attempts at illegal crossing, compared to 12,000 for the entire previous year. On bad days, border guards record over a hundred attempts on 173 kilometers of fenced border. "Latvia is not a destination country. We are guarding Germans, Belgians, Dutchmen here," border guard chief Guntis Pujāts told Euronews. "They are just trying to pass through Latvia." Euronews ↗

Both figures must be read carefully, as they measure different things. Frontex's 3,209 are detected entries, i.e. people who crossed the border. Latvia's 10,000 are prevented attempts. One can therefore decrease and the other increase without contradicting each other.

Forty-three people, paragraph 4 and no judge

Both Latvian groups are described equally in official statements: they were "returned to the country of departure" under paragraph 4 of the State Border Guard law. German wire service reports and Slovak reproductions softened this to "detained," which is factually different. Returning across the border is an administrative act, not a proceeding. From official statements about both groups, it does not appear that individual proceedings were conducted for any of the 43 people from these two tunnels or that reasons for their travel were assessed — the authorities describe them only as returned under paragraph 4. Valsts robežsardze ↗

Latvian public broadcaster LTV filmed at the first tunnel on the day Operation Vilkatis began. The report also includes what wire service reports omitted — fifteen people were handed over to the country they came from.



Court traces of the tunnels exist, but lead elsewhere. In Lithuania, a preliminary investigation was launched for the discovery near Piesčiai, conducted by a prosecutor from the Alytus District Prosecutor's Office under the Kaunas Regional Prosecutor's Office, and illegal border crossing carries a fine, arrest or imprisonment up to two years. Thus, smugglers are prosecuted, not those who passed through the tunnel. LRT ↗

Three legal fronts and one missing ruling

The dispute over tunnels and how people at the border are treated is proceeding simultaneously in three places. The answer to whether people can be returned this way should come from just one of them — and it remains silent so far.

The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights heard on February 12, 2025 in one day three cases: H. M. M. and others v. Latvia, C. O. C. G. and others v. Lithuania and R. A. and others v. Poland. All concern pushbacks on the Belarusian border and Article 4 of Protocol 4, which prohibits collective expulsion. In the Latvian case, it involves 26 Iraqi Kurds. No ruling has been issued to date, thus eighteen months after the hearing. ESĽP ↗

In the meantime, Lithuania is suing Belarus itself at the International Court of Justice in The Hague for organized smuggling. Al Jazeera ↗ And Latvia's General Prosecutor's Office began criminal proceedings in mid-July against representatives of the Belarusian border service — according to the guard's complaint, it is not a series of individual attempts, but "deliberate and systematic unlawful activity of a criminal organization."

Latvia, meanwhile, is heading to parliamentary elections on October 3. Euronews ↗

Limits of this perspective

Frontex is a party to this dispute, not an arbiter, and its analysis is an internal assessment, not proof. It formulates this more cautiously than the headlines suggest: it is certain that tunnels would not arise on the Belarusian side without the knowledge of local services, but when asserting that the regime provides specialists and uses the migrants themselves for digging, it says only that this "cannot be ruled out". Nobody has independently seen the document itself — it is public through NDR and WDR.

Belarus and Russia have long rejected the accusations and the Belarusian embassy in Berlin did not respond to the German newsrooms' questions. And the other side of the equation, namely the treatment of people stopped at the border, is precisely the subject of dispute in Strasbourg. The practice of returning itself is documented by official Latvian statements, but its legal permissibility under the Convention remains undecided.

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