Estonian police hopes to repatriate Vietnamese illegals by end of year

Photo: Risto Mets/Tartu Postimees

The Estonian police hopes to repatriate the Vietnamese illegals captured at the southern border in February by the end of the year, the magazine of the Police and Border Guard Board reports.

The agency expects to receive the illegal migrants' documents from Vietnam by the end of May, the board's migration supervision chief Toomas Kuuse told the magazine. "Next steps depend on transport arrangements, but there's a high probability that we'll return them to their home country by the end of the year," he said.

The agency's deputy director for border guard Tonu Hunt observed that Vietnam has made repatriation very complicated. "They deal with individual cases and do not recognize joint charter flights. The nearest place where we can take the Vietnamese is Laos," he said.

The proceedings are further complicated by shortage of interpreters, central criminal police investigator Margus Maasepp stated. The board has so far used the help of three interpreters only one of whom translates directly into Estonian while the other two use Russian as the medium. Since the interpreters are not on the payroll of the Police and Border Guard Board planning interrogations depends on when it is possible for the interpreters to be present.

At the beginning of February border guards intercepted in the southern Voru County 28 individuals who had illegally entered Estonia from Russia. Of them 27 were citizens of Vietnam and one was an Armenian national. This is the biggest number of illegals captured on the external border of Estonia so far.