Critics have claimed the Hungarian government has used its intelligence services to push its anti-migration agenda.
The authorities took a number of journalists including the Telegraph to the border amid warnings from mainstream leaders on the continent that the war between Israel and Hamas is raising the risk of Islamic terror being exported to the bloc.
Every day, some 1,400 attempted crossings are detected by border guards along Hungary’s 110 miles of fencing, which stands four metres high and is topped with coils of razor wire, along its frontier with Serbia.
More than 300,000 enter the EU’s Schengen free-travel zone via the frontier each year, according to Hungarian officials, who say border guards are able to turn fewer than 175,000 back towards the Western Balkans.
It is now considered to be the second busiest migration route to Western Europe, behind crossings via the Mediterranean Sea.
The frontier was exploited by Salah Abdeslam, the leader of the terror cell behind the Paris and Brussels terror attacks, which killed 169 people in 2015 and 2016, to move between Europe and Syria.
The terrorist met two men, who later blew themselves up, two months before the attack on the French capital at Budapest’s main train station after they had arrived back in the EU having trained with Islamic State.
And it has now proved to be a lucrative business for people smugglers, who charge €1,000 for organised trips and a €300 (£240) transit toll for anyone hoping to jump the fence alone.
Those paying the full amount are organised into military-style formations of 20 and armed with marbles, slingshots and sticks to fight back against Hungarian border guards sent to stop them.
First, a ladder is thrown up against the fence on the Serbian side of the border, and a smuggler, armed with a gun, often a Glock handgun or a Kalashnikov rifle, climbs into position to guard the crossing.
Smugglers open fire
Border guard Csaba Balasz, a commanding officer, said the smugglers often fire their weapons in the air to warn off police and signal the start of the next stage of operation.
Last month, in a sign of an escalation in the violence, a vehicle belonging to a joint patrol of Hungarian and Serbian officers was directly fired at.
The migrants, two-thirds of which are from Syria and Afghanistan, typically charge over the fence under cover from the smugglers, hurling sticks, rocks and firing marbles at the guards hoping to stop them from escaping into the nearby forests.
Additional ladders to make the cross-border dash simpler are charged as an optional extra by the smuggling gangs, who slip back into Serbia as their customers reach the EU.