Hungary will deploy extra border police force to its southern border with Serbia in its newest attempt to deter a large scale influx of illegal migrants. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief of staff, Janos Lazar, said Tuesday that the cabinet has decided to deploy several thousand police officers to the southern border where illegal border crossings from Serbia are growing despite construction of a fence to check it, according to Xinhua news agency.
"Several thousand police officers will be deployed to the Serbian border whose task will be to defend this border section," Lazar told reporters after cabinet meeting, according to DW.
The border police force will guard the four-meter high and 175-kilometer long fence along Hungary's border with Serbia, Lazar said.
Nearly 130,000 migrants have reached Hungary this year, which is three times higher than 2014's figures. The number of registered migrants this year has crossed 100,000 so far this year, compared to 43,000 in 2014, according to BBC.
Serbian border with Hungary has become a major crossing point for tens of thousands of refugees from Africa and Middle East. Serbia, however, decided against the idea to build a fence on the border with Macedonia to prevent illegal migration.
"Serbia is asking the European Union to formulate its own policy and we will take a position based on this policy and our own national interests. Serbia is not a destination country for the migrants and so far we don't have issues with asylum seekers," Serbian minister Aleksandar Vulin said, according to Macedonian Online.
