Hungarian police officers apprehended 151 illegal immigrants who entered the country despite coronavirus border closures, according to a police report released today.
Hungarian border police report that after successfully detaining the migrants, they were transported back to the countries they crossed the border from. Most migrants are hail from Middle Eastern countries and enter Hungary from Serbia but Romania after traveling along the Balkan route.
An additional 37 were prevented from crossing the Serbian border into Hungary, according to the report.
Three chronic border violators were arrested by police and criminal proceedings initiated against two migrants for falsifying documents.
Despite Hungary’s tough border defenses, the country has faced a surge in border crossing attempts from migrants this year, including nearly 700 in February who tried to cross from Serbia at one time. They were all bussed away by Serbian police back to their migrant camps.
Frontex reports that in the first four months of this year, there has been a 60 percent increase in illegal border crossings on the Western Balkans route despite a dip in April due to the coronavirus outbreak. Hungary expects that with borders increasingly reopening across Europe following coronavirus lockdowns, that migration will only increase over the warm summer months.
