New Czech Police Unit at the Hungarian-Serbian Border

As part of the border police cooperation between the Visegrád Four countries (Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland), a new 40-member Czech police contingent started patrolling on the Hungarian-Serbian border on Sunday morning.

Colonel Jenő Szilassi-Horváth, deputy chief of the Csongrád-Csanád county police, said the Czech police officers would provide tangible help in border protection. The members of the previous contingent assisted Hungarian police in detaining more than 6,000 migrants in 777 cases during their two-month service, the state news agency MTI reports.

The Czech police officers are helping border police in the Szeged and Kiszombor border police stations. They will work with their own equipment and vehicles, under the supervision of Hungarian police officers, until March24, the colonel said.

The commander of the Czech contingent, Miroslav Tóth, said that he and his colleagues arrived in Szeged with 16 vehicles (off-road vehicles and a prisoner transport vehicle), assisted by night vision devices and two dogs. Their main task is to protect the Schengen border and to detain border crossers.

The colonel said that he had already served in Hungary in 2016, in Szeged. The experience he gained then, for example in handling large groups of people, he can use in his work in the Czech Republic in the field of immigration.