Hungary’s fight against irregular migration has also intensified the hunt for migrant smugglers, putting a number of Lithuanians behind bars. As prisons overflowed, Hungary started deporting the convicted smuggler, but they are unlikely to serve sentences in their home countries.
At dusk, on a warm August evening, Marek pulled into a petrol station near the Hungarian-Romanian border. He closed the window and stayed at the wheel of the van. He only got out when he saw the officers’ guns pointing at him.
Asked to open the back door of the van, Marek rushed to call the manager, with whom he had been in constant contact for the past hour. Only this time, the manager did not answer.
At the back of the van, the silhouettes of people emerged, followed by shouts and chaos. Marek then realised he had become part of a criminal network involved in the smuggling of migrants.
This incident is not unique. Since 2021, 31 Lithuanians have been detained in Hungary. This is the official figure, but in reality, as many as 50 Lithuanians and 30 Latvians were put behind bars in Hungary.
Former Lithuanian Ambassador to Hungary Vytautas Pinkus attributes the issue to the activities of organised groups that recruit people in the Baltics.
“A minor was arrested and convicted for bringing a car from Lithuania by himself. I don’t even know how much he was paid for that. This means that these organisations are targeting very young people. Perhaps knowing that minors cannot be imprisoned,” he said.
And the scheme is simple.
Drivers are recruited through job ads or friends who help them find jobs in Hungary, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Poland, or Serbia. Migrants from Syria, Afghanistan, Turkey, and elsewhere cross into these countries in search of a better life.
Most often, Lithuanian or Latvian men, aged between 20 and 45, respond to these job offers.
Marek had just turned 40 when he became involved in the scheme. The former warehouse manager is now facing six years in prison. But he is not the only Lithuanian inmate in Veszprém Prison, visited by the LRT journalists.
Wondering about pay
“I wanted to earn more money and started looking for work online. A picture kept popping up in the corner. I looked at it once, looked at it again, and then clicked,” Marek said when asked to describe the start of his journey to Hungary.
The advert is unremarkable: work abroad, good pay, driving license required. The man who answers the phone offers 260 euros for 10 hours of work transporting goods.
“They say they are in this situation because of the war in Ukraine and they are helping unofficially. People collect parcels and then they have to be shipped from Italy, Slovakia, and, most recently, from Hungary,” Marek said.
The Lithuanian driver’s defence is that he did not know what cargo he was actually transporting.
The coordinator gave him detailed instructions and a phone. When he arrived in Budapest, Marek had to take over a van bound for Slovakia. Later, it was clarified that he was going to Italy, and then to Ukraine.
Then followed a long series of misunderstandings and miscommunication. The lock on the back door of the van was said to be broken, so Marek was told not to touch it. He was following the GPS directions sent by the coordinators. They were most likely diverting him on longer routes to minimise the risk of being caught.
According to Marek, he believed he was transporting sunflower seeds and wine. It was only when the police stopped him that it became clear that there were 37 migrants in the van, while the GPS directions led not to Ukraine but to Romania.
Hungarian police have gathered evidence that the Lithuanian was part of an organised group. But Marek says he is innocent, as he neither saw nor heard people during the journey.
“I was just wondering what the job was like, what the pay was,” he said.
Waiting for release
Hungary’s populist far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made the fight against irregular migration a cornerstone of his policy.
“We are not only protecting Hungary from illegal immigrants, but we are also protecting the whole of Europe,” Orbán said at an event in Vienna this year.
In 2022, the Hungarian border guards stopped 330,000 migrants trying to enter the country.
Last year, the Hungarian police also stepped up their efforts to catch migrant smugglers, arresting around 2,000 people in total, most of them foreigners. In Hungary, people can be sentenced to two to six years in prison for this activity.
Vitoldas, 23, is another Lithuanian detained in Hungary. He admits that he and his partner came here for work and were promised 3,000 euros for transporting migrants to Italy.
“Well, I got into trouble. But I didn’t know that the punishment was so severe,” said Vitoldas, who was sentenced to six years in prison.
He was caught by Hungarian officers on his way back from Italy, as he was supposed to continue transporting migrants.
But for people like Vitoldas, the punishment is only on paper. Law enforcement has promised to release the smuggler before the verdict is announced.
This is because Hungary has started releasing convicted prisoners in an effort to meet EU standards for prisoners’ living conditions, as well as the high costs of detaining foreigners.
Since April this year, more than 1,400 convicted people smugglers have been released from Hungarian prisons.
“We had to take this decision on people smugglers because Brussels is not contributing to the cost of border security, but is punishing Hungary when prisons are overcrowded,” said Hungary’s Deputy Interior Minister Bence Rétvári.
When LRT journalists visited Veszprém Prison in June, Lithuanian Donatas, who was also sentenced to six years in prison, was eager to leave Hungary as soon as possible.
“One of my friends has already been deported. I am still waiting,” he said.
Avoid serving sentences?
Donatas was detained before his 30th birthday. After analysing correspondence between four people, the Hungarian police found that he and three other Lithuanians were involved in organised people smuggling.
“Message by message. Of course, you have something to cling to. But where are the real facts? Those people were gone. There are no real facts,” Donatas said.
In fact, when he and his friend were caught, the migrants were no longer in the van. Donatas says he arrived at the Hungarian-Austrian border to help an acquaintance fix a flat tire, while he was visiting Hungary simply to admire the country.
Although Donatas claims he is innocent, he pleaded guilty in court.
“I cannot talk any other way now,” he said, meaning that the confession was a condition for getting out of jail sooner.
Donatas and Vitoldas were granted an unusual Hungarian amnesty, officially known as reintegration, under which the offender is deported from the country.
“The prisoners sign that they will have to serve their sentence somewhere else, that they know they have been sentenced, are released from prison, and are obliged to leave Hungary within 72 hours. In this case, they go somewhere, probably to Lithuania, or maybe not, we don’t know because nobody has any way of checking it,” explained former Lithuanian Ambassador to Hungary Pinkus.
According to information available to LRT, Hungary may have already released dozens of Lithuanian convicts. It is difficult to get an exact figure because Hungarian prisons do not usually inform other countries’ authorities about releases.
The Lithuanian police are only aware of six Lithuanians who have been released. The Probation Service, meanwhile, is not aware of the situation at all.
“There is no possibility to serve the rest of the sentence in Lithuania,” Ramūnas Matonis, spokesperson at the Police Department, told LRT.
According to the EU law, serving a sentence in one’s home country must be enforced by the Prison Service, but no requests have been received from Hungary.
“As the institutions of the penal enforcement system have not received any information about the convicted persons, we cannot attempt to describe their current sentence or life circumstances, which would be a matter of speculation,” the Justice Ministry said.
The European Commission has launched a legal procedure against Hungary’s decision. According to Marius Vaščega, head of the EC Representation in Lithuania, the Hungarian decision does not contain any rules on how convicted people should be treated outside the country.
“A note was sent to Hungary for non-compliance. Such shortened sentences for those convicted of smuggling offences are neither effective nor a deterrent,” he said.
Latvian smugglers
The demand for drivers to transport migrants is growing across the EU. In Lithuania, more than 70 pre-trial investigations into people smuggling were opened in September this year.
Among the arrested smugglers, 23 were Latvians. The LRT Investigation Team and Re:Baltica managed to identify one Latvian national who was detained this year trying to enter Poland with migrants at Lithuania’s Kalvarija border checkpoint.
According to Ainars, he did not know he was transporting migrants. In April, he agreed to take four people from Latvia’s Daugavpils to Germany for 200 euros per person. A childhood friend offered him the job, the Latvian national said.
“My friend said that his former boss from Germany had called and asked to bring four people to work. I had two days off, so I calculated that I could go,” Ainars said.
He picked up the well-dressed men and did not suspect anything because all the passengers had passports.
“I had heard about these migrants, but I didn’t think it could be the case. I worked for a courier company, and there were all kinds of people. There have been problems, people with passports, without passports, but not like this,” he said.
Until September 1, 590 smuggled migrants from Latvia have been detained in Lithuania, compared to 23 in the same period last year. This may be linked to the fact that the flow of migrants crossing from Belarus has been redirected from Lithuania to Latvia.
More than 9,000 migrants have been turned away at the Belarusian-Latvian border this year, almost double the number compared to last year.
Marek, Donatas, and Ainars are not the real names of the subjects in this story. They agreed to speak to journalists on condition of anonymity.
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