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A total of 145,000 illegal entries have been recorded by Hungarian authorities at the country’s border since the beginning of the year.

Through a statement issued by the government, Chief Security Advisor György Bakondi revealed that the number has increased by 57,000 compared to the same period of 2021, SchengenVisaInfo.com reports.

In addition, Bakondi also added that even the number of people smugglers detained has doubled to nearly 1,000.

“While illegal entrants used to come mainly from Syria and Afghanistan in the past, today many of them also arrive from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Tunisia,” he pointed out in this regard.

According to Bakondi, in response to this situation, the government has decided to strengthen the border fence, thus recruiting and training a special unit of border patrols to work with the local police to secure Hungary’s borders.

As Bakondi explains, around 10,000-13,000 migrants cross into Hungary from the neighbouring country every day.

He also noted that since the beginning of the war, Hungary had received over 885,000 people who had crossed over from Ukraine.

However, the recent data provided to the United Nations Refugee Agency have revealed that from February 24 until now, Hungary has accepted about 1,188,983 Ukrainian Refugees who have either stayed or just transited.

Otherwise, in a statement issued on July 29, the Hungarian government’s data contradicts the data mentioned above.

As stated in the statement, since the beginning of the year, Hungarian authorities have caught about 157,000 people trying to enter the country illegally.

“The number of people smugglers detained had doubled, to nearly 1,000, while the migrants they had helped cross the border had tripled. In addition, illegal migrants often arrived in larger groups, and their behaviour was “increasingly aggressive,” he said.

Previously, considering the border situation in Hungary, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán decided to create a new border protection body to guarantee border security.

At the same time, the Prime Minister also revealed that he had instructed Interior Minister Sándor Pinter to create a new body within the next two months due to concerns of increased migratory pressure.

Commenting on the move, Orbán said that the new body will operate within the police but will not include the police officers or soldiers and also will deal exclusively with border protection.

Moreover,  European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) calculations have shown that in the first half of 2022, there were around 114,720 irregular entries into the European Union.

Such data also revealed that in the first six months of this year, the EU registered 84 per cent more irregular entries than in the same period of 2021.