RIGA, Sept 24 (LETA) - Police raids, announced by the National Alliance to crack down on illegal immigration in Riga, will start this Thursday, municipal officials informed.

Riga Vice Mayor Edvards Ratnieks (National Alliance) said at a news conference on Wednesday that this will not be a one-off operation but a consistent and systematic work.

The vice mayor called on residents of Riga who have information or suspicions of locations frequented by illegal migrants to report them to the municipal police.

Ratnieks said that the National Alliance will also continue work to limit legal immigration. Ratnieks believes that it is necessary to ensure that all migrants that arrive in Latvia later leave the country. Guest workers must leave Latvia once their work is done, and all international students who drop out of Latvia's education institutions must leave the country as well, said Ratnieks.

Juris Lukins, Chief of the Riga Municipal Police, said that the the most important task of the police is to ensure public order and security.

Before dealing with the illegal immigrants, the police met with the competent authorities, discussed algorithms of action and invited Riga's neighborhood associations to provide information on potential locations of the "illegals".

Lukass said that the municipal police will not catch people on the streets nor ask tourists to show their documents. Instead, they will check places where illegal immigrants might gather and persons who might be staying in Latvia illegally.

Girts Lapins (National Alliance), chair of the Riga City Council Committee on Security, Public Order and the Prevention of Corruption, said that the National Alliance is of the opinion that migration has become a problem for society as a whole, which is why the party will work on legislative amendments, propose migrant quotas and fight to limit legal immigration.

Previously, Ratnieks informed that since the beginning of this year, municipal police have detained 22 illegal immigrants and handed them over to the State Border Guard. In the full 2024, law enforcement authorities detained 23 illegal immigrants in Riga, and 24 were detained in 2023.

At the end of this past summer, Ratnieks gave all illegal immigrants a month to leave Riga and Latvia. Migration was one of the issues the National Alliance highlighted in its campaign ahead of the last municipal elections.

Meanwhile, State Border Guard Chief Guntis Pujats voiced an opinion that Ratnieks exaggerates the issue of illegal immigration in the capital city.

Although 22 illegal migrants have been detained by the municipal police in the city this year, Pujats noted that this is a tiny fraction of the number of migrants detained elsewhere in the country or prevented from crossing into Latvia from Belarus.