On Monday Hungarian Police informed Hungarian news agency MTI that 247 people were apprehended for illegally crossing the border between Friday and Sunday.
According to statistics published on the police website, 45 migrants were apprehended on Friday, 53 on Saturday and 128 on Sunday. They were accompanied back to the temporary border security fence by police officers and soldiers serving on the Serbian-Hungarian border. Over the weekend twelve illegal border-crossers were apprehended at the Ukrainian-Hungarian border and nine migrants were apprehended as part of in-depth border control – in Fejér county and Budapest.
In accordance with the new regulations which came into force on 5 July, migrants who are apprehended within eight kilometres of the Serbian or Croatian borders will be accompanied back to the gate in the border fence and will be directed to the nearest transit zone. Criminal proceedings will be launched against those who have clearly crossed the border illegally, damaged the border fence, or are suspected of people smuggling; immigration proceedings will be launched against those apprehended at the Romanian or Ukrainian borders.
On the first day of the new legislation, the number of those accompanied back to the border fence totalled 190, and this sum increased to 531 during the week. According to police reports, just a few people were apprehended daily on other external borders.