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HORGOS, Serbia — Hungary stiffened its resistance on Tuesday to an influx of migrants from Serbia, while more people drowned trying to reach Europe by boat and diplomats kept struggling to address the Continent’s refugee crisis.
HORGOS, Serbia — The multitudes of refugees and migrants who had been surging into Hungary in recent days found their path blocked on Tuesday, the first day of an intensified crackdown by the Hungarian authorities. Their access narrowed to a single door in a small, white trailer through which they were being slowly processed, one by one.
The Hungarian authorities declared a state of crisis along the border with Serbia, detaining at least 155 migrants and threatening to prosecute and imprison others who try to enter illegally. Serbia reacted with alarm; its foreign minister, Ivica Dacic, called the turning back of migrants to Serbia “unacceptable,” Reuters reported.
Hundreds of migrants were halted at the Hungarian border, on a main highway to Budapest. By late afternoon, about 800 of them simply sat in the highway and waited to see what would happen next, or began plotting ways to circumvent the Hungarian obstruction.
In the Aegean Sea, at least 22 migrants drowned, including four children, when their 65-foot wooden boat capsized as they were trying to reach the Greek island of Kos.
“Open the door! Open!” a crowd of about 200 protesters began to chant late Tuesday afternoon at the Roszke border station. “Germany! Germany!”
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Chancellor Werner Faymann of Austria called on fellow leaders of the European Union to gather next week in Brussels for an urgent summit meeting on the migrant situation. Officials of the union’s member nations tried and failed on Monday to find a substantial collective approach to the crisis.
A few miles away, a fresh barrier had been erected at a gap in the border fence where thousands of migrants had walked into Hungary in recent weeks, and new arrivals encountered only razor wire and a line of police officers pointing them back toward Serbia.
Some officials have said that Germany’s initial embrace of the migrants helped make the situation unmanageable. Ms. Merkel responded on Tuesday by saying that finger-pointing was not helpful. “If we now start to have to excuse ourselves for the fact that we show a friendly face in an emergency, then that is not my country,” she said.
The migrant crisis that has rattled Europe and fractured its already shaky unity — producing heart-rending images of squalor, death and the joyful celebration of those who made it through — has now found fresh focus on this flat, forested border at the edge of the European Union.
Under new laws that took effect in Hungary at midnight, migrants who try to breach the 109-mile fence made out of razor wire being constructed along Hungary’s border with Serbia face arrest and criminal charges. Officials also threatened to imprison anyone who damages the barrier.
Just one day after European leaders failed to find a substantial collective approach to the crisis, and two days after Germany, Austria, Slovakia and the Netherlands instituted new border controls, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Chancellor Werner Faymann of Austria called for an urgent summit next week in Brussels to again to try to come up with a unified strategy.
Zoltan Kovacs, a spokesman for Prime Minister Viktor Orban, said Hungary was setting up a “transit zone” along the border with Serbia, where arriving migrants would be stopped before officially entering Hungary. Only those who have already applied for asylum would be allowed through; the others would be turned back to Serbia. The zone appeared to be a way to get around rules limiting the number of people Hungary could deport to Serbia each day.
With refugees, fleeing from war, and migrants, weary of poverty, pouring in from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Africa, any obstruction quickly creates growing pools of the desperate. That’s what happened last week at Budapest’s Keleti train station when Hungary temporarily cut off access for migrants to westbound trains.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Hungary said 48 migrants in the transit zone had applied for asylum, with 13 rejected and the rest under review — a tiny fraction of the number of migrants at the border.
And it is what is beginning to happen now in northern Serbia.
Hungarian officials said they were preparing to erect a fence along the country’s eastern border with Romania that would be similar to the one on the Serbian border.
“We hope that the messages we have been sending migrants for a long time have reached them,” said Gyorgy Bakondi, an aide to Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary. “Don’t come. Because this route doesn’t lead where you want to go.”
Speaking from the border village of Horgos, Serbia’s labor minister, Aleksandar Vulin, told the Serbian broadcaster B92 that the situation could “spiral out of control.” He called for Hungary to open the border and for refugees to be allowed to seek asylum in Hungary. He said that migrants were arriving from all directions and that 1,000 were stranded “in no man’s land.”
Indeed, Hungarian officials said, after several days that saw record numbers of migrants crossing the border — 9,000 on Monday alone — the numbers were much lower on Tuesday, proof that people were heeding the warning, or at least waiting for the picture to clear.
Mr. Vulin said Serbia would provide food, water and transportation to temporary shelters, but he added that the crisis could not be solved without Hungary’s cooperation.
“I knew they would close it, but I thought maybe they’d do an exception,” said Salib Yussef, 57, who had arrived at the border at 3 a.m. with his two wives and two sons. “We were just three hours late! Now I’m stuck here.”
Migrants stuck at the border threatened on Tuesday to conduct a hunger strike. About 200 migrants chanted “Open, open, open!” and “Germany! Germany!”
Already, maps were circulating on social media and on leaflets in some refugee camps showing alternate routes to Western Europe. They suggested going west through Croatia and Slovenia, rather than north through Hungary, or trying the land border connecting Turkey with Bulgaria, also protected by a razor-wire fence and patrolled by the police.
Salib Yussef, a 27-year-old from Aleppo, Syria, arrived in Horgos at 3 a.m. on Tuesday with two wives and two sons, shortly after the border was sealed.
Croatia’s border chief, Zlatko Sokolar, said the country would deploy 6,000 police officers along the border, although there were still only a handful of migrants trying to pass through Croatia. That may well change in coming days, he said.
“I knew they would close it but I thought maybe they’d do an exception,” he said, looking downtrodden. “We were just three hours late! I’ll be waiting as long as it takes. I have no other options. Maybe they’ll reopen it tomorrow?”
“We will not make the mistake we have seen in other countries,” Mr. Sokolar said. In Slovenia — which, like Hungary, is a European Union member and a member of the passport-free Schengen zone — preparations were also being made for a possible influx. The country is preparing to accept “several thousand” migrants, the Interior Ministry said.
He added: “Why is Hungary doing this anyway? We don’t want to stay there. I want to go to the Netherlands, maybe Germany. Now I’m stuck here.”
Austria said it, too, was preparing for the likelihood that more migrants will enter through Slovenia and was set to deploy 2,200 troops to patrol the borders.
Hungary said that it would post officers every 35 meters, or about 115 feet, along the entire border, and that they would arrest anyone trying to cross illegally. Scores of judges have been deployed to expedite legal proceedings against migrants charged with breaking the law.
In Hungary, Mr. Orban has taken a hard line talking about the threat the arrivals, most of whom are Muslim, present to Europe’s Christian culture. On Tuesday, his government declared a “state of crisis” along the border and rolled out new revisions to refugee laws that include harsh penalties, including prison time, for those crossing the border illegally or damaging the border fence. The new policy also calls for the creation of “transit zones” right at the border, small encampments that Hungarian authorities say do not constitute entering the country and where migrants could be received and quickly evaluated.
In what appeared to be an effort to shepherd migrants out of the country, the Hungarian authorities continued overnight to charter trains, carrying about 1,000 migrants at a time, from the border with Serbia to the border with Austria. Migrants were then allowed to cross into Austria, local news media reported.
On Tuesday, the plan began to take shape at the closed Roszke crossing. About 100 people lined up to get through the trailer’s door while workers began to create the transit zone nearby. Some people continued to try to sneak across the border, and government officials said that more than 180 people had been arrested under the new laws.
The Hungarian restrictions were beginning to have an effect on other countries.
The Hungarians say the arrivals, even those fleeing war in Syria, should not be considered refugees after they reach Hungarian soil because they passed through several “safe countries” first. The Hungarians argue that the migrants have no right to simply choose a country.
The Austrian authorities said they were preparing for the likelihood that migrants would seek to bypass Hungary and enter Austria via Croatia and then Slovenia. The Austrian Army was set to deploy 2,200 soldiers to patrol the borders, primarily in the eastern state of Burgenland, which borders Hungary and shares short borders with Slovenia and Slovakia.
One of the countries Hungary deems “safe” is Serbia, so officials in Budapest argue they have the right to turn back those who try to cross from there.
At a new information center for migrants in Belgrade, Serbia, few visitors accepted the closing of the borders. “I will continue on the same route,” said Bashar Makansi, 47, a salesman from Aleppo, Syria, who vowed to press on. “My wife and children are there in Germany. What else can I do?”
The Serbians disagree, and international organizations cast a skeptical eye on the new Hungarian laws. “Asylum seekers and refugees cannot be turned away from the border,” said Babar Baloch, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Hungary. “We want them to apply international rules under which they have obligations to these people.”
The moves by Hungary, which has found itself to be an unwilling center of Europe’s migration crisis, are the latest blow to two decades of borderless travel in parts of the European Union, which now has 28 members. On Monday, Austria, Slovakia and the Netherlands followed Germany’s example over the weekend and introduced checks at their borders, effectively suspending Europe’s border-free Schengen area.
On a visit to the border region, Aleksandar Vulin, Serbia’s minister of labor, employment and social affairs, said the situation was becoming “complicated” and could quickly “go out of control.” The migrants who are taken through that white door, fingerprinted and questioned have entered Hungary, as far as Serbia is concerned, he said.
On Monday in Brussels, the European Union failed to agree on a modest plan that would have required countries to distribute 120,000 more migrants across the bloc. Countries from Eastern and Central Europe, including Hungary, opposed rules dictating migration policy, which they argue undermine their national sovereignty.
By Tuesday afternoon, though, only 48 migrants had gotten through that door; 13 of them, who had their applications denied on the spot, were sent back to Serbia — or to rejoin the crowd sitting on the highway outside — while three more demanded to appeal the decision.
The issue has created an East-West divide, with former Communist countries reluctant to accept a model that many there see as imposing multiculturalism on a region that considers itself ill equipped to accept and integrate large numbers of migrants.
Omar Abdi Macruf, from Somalia, walked out of the trailer, shaking his head sadly. His application had been rejected, and he was not sure why. The only paper they gave him was in Hungarian, which he cannot read.
Mr. Kovacs, the Hungarian spokesman, said that the European Union needed to work to stop migrants from illegally entering the bloc in Greece, which has often been the entry point for people fleeing countries like Afghanistan, Eritrea and Syria. Hungary is eager for illegal migrants to be fended off before they can begin a trail via the western Balkans that eventually passes through Hungary and on to Austria, Germany or other destinations.
With migrants struggling to find new routes into Europe, thousands of refugees had poured into northwestern Turkey over the weekend. A hundred of them, gathered in a small square in the heart of Edirne, demanded a solution to the crisis. “We want the world to treat us as humans,” said Nawar Alghousini, 21, who arrived in Turkey nine months ago from Syria. “We are not terrorists. We escaped war, and we want to have a normal life.”
The Hungarian position is that, because the migrants have come through nations that the European Commission has asked to be designated as “safe countries,” such as Greece, Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey, they are not actually refugees fleeing imminent danger, but rather economic migrants who have no legal right to enter the country.
Irena Vojackova-Sollorano, the United Nations representative in Serbia, told the Serbian news agency Tanjug that the situation along the border was changing hour to hour. She reiterated the international body’s position that people who crossed into Hungary should be granted all the relevant protections and not simply turned back to Serbia.
“More than 70 percent of the population escaping Syria are refugees,” she said, “running away from a situation that is, for them, a matter of life and death — and it is up to us to do all that we can to help them.”
Slovenia and Croatia said they were preparing for the possibility of a surge of migrants streaming through their territories to circumvent Hungary en route to Austria.
In Slovenia, which is a member of both the European Union and the passport-free Schengen area, the authorities said they had noted a slight upturn in cases involving migrants and human trafficking, which they said could increase with the Hungarian restrictions.
“In the case of a sudden arrival of large numbers of refugees, Slovenia could give shelter to several thousands and our capacities are being increased daily,” Bostjan Sefic, a state secretary at the Interior Ministry, told Agence France-Presse. He asked local communities to be patient and to provide help to those in need should the numbers exceed the government’s ability to handle them.
In Croatia, Zlatko Sokolar, a senior border police official, told the local news media that 6,000 police officers would be deployed to control the borders, but that as of Monday afternoon, there were few migrants arriving.
A few hours after Hungary put its new controls into effect, the European Commission, the administrative arm of the European Union, said it wanted more details from Budapest.
“We have asked the Hungarians for clarification regarding the legislation and how it will be implemented,” said Natasha Bertaud, a spokeswoman for the commission.
