On the Balkan route, which concerns Hungary directly, illegal migrants destroy their documents so that their identities cannot be established.Continue reading
More than a thousand foreign nationals are serving their final sentences for human trafficking in Hungarian prisons, twenty times more than a few years earlier, the head of the Information Technology and Electronic Administration Department of the National Office for the Judiciary said.
Zoltán János Péter said that the number of criminal cases involving foreign traffickers has increased dramatically in the last few years. While until two or three years ago, no more than 40-50 foreign nationals were serving their final sentences in Hungarian penitentiary institutions for such reasons, the number has now exceeded 1,000.
He added that the number of cases related to human trafficking has increased sharply, especially in courts near the borders. This is likely to be one of the reasons why the number of new cases in the courts, which had been on a downward trend for years, is likely to increase again in the first months of 2023.
Although the 1,000 figure mentioned above is already high, this only refers to those already sentenced, while in fact there are many more foreign traffickers currently on trial.
The Hungarian Prison Service Headquarters (BvOP) recently held a professional meeting with the consuls accredited to Hungary to discuss the increasing number of foreign prisoners, most of them human smugglers. As it turns out, currently, there are more than 2,500 smugglers in domestic prisons, who are nationals of 73 countries. Some of them are only in detention for the time being, but their detention and especially the language difficulties, is an additional challenge for the prison service.
Despite the winter, migration pressure at the Hungarian-Serbian border is not easing, one reason being the mild winter weather. This is also the case on a European level, with NGOs rescue ships constantly picking up illegal migrants on the sea from small boats and transporting them to European shores.
One of the NGO ships operating on the Mediterranean Sea. Photo: Twitter
In Hungary, Hundreds of people continue to try to cross the southern border every week, and the illegal migrants are then picked up by traffickers on the Hungarian side of the border to be taken to Western Europe. Because the migratory pressure persists, the police are recruiting border hunters again in some counties. The main task of the candidates will be to guard the state border and prevent illegal migration, while assisting the police.
Last weekend, from Friday to Sunday, police took action against 542 border crossers, the National Police Headquarters informed MTI on Monday. Last week, the highest number of border crossers so far this year, 1,525, were arrested and escorted back to the country. In the previous week – from 13 to 19 March – the number of apprehended people was 1,265.
Featured photo via Pixabay
