Hungary Completes Border Container Camps for Asylum-Seekers

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — The Hungarian interior ministry says the expansion of two border container camps where asylum-seekers have to wait until their cases are decided has been completed.

The ministry said Friday that prison inmates were used to put 324 additional containers in the camps built on the Serbian border at the towns of Roszke and Tompa.

Hungary’s new asylum rules, in place March 21, have been widely condemned by U.N. agencies and human rights advocates. Hungary plans to close the remaining refugee reception centers in the country and transfer all asylum-seekers older than 14 to the border camps.

Only a handful of asylum-seekers a day can present their applications at the camps, built by Hungary along with fences protected by razor wire on the Serbian and Croatian borders in 2015.