On Monday, Minister of Interior Sándor Pintér – who says that the Hungarian border security fence continues to be effective – told Hungarian news agency MTI that a separate unit has been formed to repair the fence.
Mr. Pintér pointed out that, thanks to completion of the fence in mid-October last year, the migration wave has been halted. He said that up to that point there were days on which thousands of migrants arrived at the Hungarian border and crossed it illegally. “Now there are days when not a single person tries to pass through the fence”, Mr. Pintér said, adding that he sees this as proof that the fence is effective.
According to Mr. Pintér, repair costs on the fence are currently negligible, with the majority of spending being allocated to the heightened police presence at the borders.
On Monday the Hungarian Police reported that from Friday to Sunday, 501 illegal border crossings were recorded in the country. This is the highest number recorded since last autumn. According to statistics available on the police website, the numbers of people caught crossing the border illegally were 113 on Friday, 151 on Saturday and 237 on Sunday.
According to an MTI correspondent, an increasing number of migrants are appearing near the Serbian-Hungarian border in the daytime, and recently groups of 10-20 people have been seen on the Vojvodina side of the border.
Police officers protecting the border continuously monitor the movement of migrants with a variety of long-range detection equipment. On Monday afternoon patrol officers monitored migrants on the other side of the border with the aid of a camera attached to a drone from the disaster management authority, which was launched near Mórahalom. On Monday a police helicopter was also patrolling the area, and thermographic cameras set up along the border can detect migrants approaching the green border from a range of several kilometres.