Hungarian Police Recruit High School Students as ‘Border Hunters’

Due to the increased pressure of migrants on the Hungarian-Serbian border, the Hungarian government has taken to secondary schools to train students to become “border hunters”.

The initiative, headed by the Hungarian police force, was announced in a press release on the force’s website. The announcement claims that police visited two different high schools, Református Líceum and Török Ignác Gimnázium, in the town of Godollo which lies around 18 miles outside of the Hungarian capital of Budapest.

The visit was described as an “information session” for those students who wished to become “border hunters” and help the police watch over the Serbian border in the south of the country. Police say that several of the students took application forms with them following the presentation.

Police also say they will continue to travel around to high schools, city events, and police departments across Hungary to provide information on how people can join the border patrol.

Around 500 border guards, also known as “border hunters” or határvadászok, patrol the Serbian border which has been the main source of border crossings of migrants travelling the Balkan route to reach Western Europe.

The Hungarian government closed the border in late 2015, but despite the closure and building a border fence and other fortifications, thousands of migrants still attempt to cross from Serbia into Hungary.

In the Serbian border town of Horgos, it is estimated that over a thousand migrants have pitched a makeshift camp and many have attempted to cross the border fence into Hungary on a continual basis. Serbian state broadcaster RTS accused the Hungarians of rounding up migrants who have attempted to get into the country and routinely dumping them back into Serbia.

György Bakondi, the chief security advisor to the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, said Monday, “Last year’s figures show, although to a lesser extent than in 2015, the Hungarian-Serbian border is still under permanent pressure”.

He went on to add, “There have been 1,142 attempts to illegally enter the country along the Hungarian-Serbian stretch of the border so far this year, which is at least the same order of magnitude as last year, despite the cold weather and the fact that countries to the south are implementing more intensive protection.”

Bakondi has also called out Hungarian pro-migrant NGOs for adding to the pressure by encouraging migrants to come to Hungary.

Hungarian politician, and vice president of Prime Minister Orbán’s Fidesz party,  Szilárd Németh said that he would like to see NGOs affiliated with left-wing billionaire Geroge Soros “cleaned out of here” and blamed the NGOs for “the spread of political correctness and global capital overcoming national governments”.