How It’s Done: Hungary Releases Footage of Walls and Guards Stopping Illegal Migrants

Border soldiers patrol along the border fence on the Hungarian-Serbian border near the vil
ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP via Getty Images

The Hungarian government has released footage showing how it protects its borders through the use of fences and quick response teams to prevent migrants from breaking into the country illegally.

While record waves of illegal migrants pour into countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, the government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary has shown how to effectively maintain a border.

Releasing footage on Saturday, the Hungarian government’s top spokesman Zoltán Kovács said: “This is how migrants are attempting to cross illegally into Hungary. Even if our political opponents try to dismiss it, there’s no denying that migration pressure is increasing.”

“PM [Prime Minister] Orbán govt will defend the border of Hungary – and the border of Europe,” he added, in reference to the fact that Hungary’s southern border is part of the shared external border of the European Union.

Earlier this week, Kovács revealed that the number of migrants attempting to illegally cross Hungary’s borders has significantly risen over the past year, with border authorities arresting 73,617 illegal migrants, compared to 21,992 border violators at this time last year.

The government spokesman added that the government also prosecuted 719 human traffickers this year, up from 274 last year.

Kovács attributed the Orbán government’s success in stemming the tide of migration to the construction of border fences along its frontiers with Serbia and Croatia, the declaration that Serbia is a safe third country for supposed asylum seekers to apply for refugee status, and the move to send significant numbers of police and soldiers to the border.

Other countries on the eastern edge of the bloc have also begun erecting border walls in order to stem the tide of migrants, including PolandLithuania, and Greece.

In the wake of President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the EU is bracing for a potential repeat of the 2015 European Migrant Crisis, in which over one million migrants flooded into Europe from Africa and the Middle East.

A humanitarian worker with decades of experience in Afghanistan warned that as many as three million migrants may try to enter Europe, more than double the number that came in the previous migrant crisis.

The lax approach taken by the governments of Joe Biden in the United States and Boris Johnson in the United Kingdom in regards to illegal immigration has seen historic numbers of migrants illegally entering the countries this year, with a record high of 15,100 entering the UK by small boats from France alone, and nearly 200,000 illegals apprehended at the Southern border of the U.S. in just the last month.

In contrast, Prime Minister Orbán has taken a tougher approach, arguing that illegal immigration would result in the destruction of the “cultural identity of Europe” as well as presenting security risks from radical Islamic terrorism.

Speaking at the Bled Strategy Forum in Slovenia earlier this month, Mr Orbán said that he has consistently represented the pro-borders position since the 2015 crisis, adding: “Now as Afghanistan happened, I think this is the reality again.”

“The only way if you would not like to create a situation where a dispute on migration destroys the unity of European Union is to give all the rights back to the nation-state in relation to migration. That’s the only way otherwise we will suffer a lot,” he warned.

“Those who are coming are all Muslims and [they are] changing the composition of our continent and it’s a challenge to our cultural Christian heritage,” he said.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.