Hungary-Austria-Germany joint effort against illegal immigration

Budapest, February 19 (MTI) – Joint patrols by Hungarian, Austrian and German police officers have been launched to help identify illegal immigrants at major railway stations, a head of department of Hungary’s riot police told a press conference on Thursday.

Balazs Petho said that two Austrian and two German officers had started working together with their Hungarian counterparts, checking on railway stations where trains to western Europe depart from.

According to figures from the national police, 231 illegal immigrants were detained in the past one day.

There was a sudden increase in the number of illegal entrants in Hungary last autumn, due to an influx of refugees from Kosovo. For the whole of last year, the number of illegal entries totalled nearly 45,000, almost all of them reported from the Hungary-Serbia border. Since January 1 the number has exceeded 25,000.