In his words, illegal immigrants from Europe's southern countries, being detained in Lithuania, is one "of the arguments that we in fact should step up protection of the state's borders".

"To do that we need to put more officers in place. We have an internal border and we cannot install a barbed fence but we can control by means of human resources and modern technology. We should slightly update one and the other, to make certain acquisitions and we need more officers," the minister told journalists on Wednesday.

Four groups of Iraqis have been detained in Lithuania in the last week and a half, having entered the country from Poland.

"It would be naïve to believe that things will be different since that pressure from the south is huge," Skvernelis said.