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Hungary bars migrants from westbound trains

At the Keleti train station in Budapest, hundreds of migrants waited Tuesday in hopes of catching a train to Germany. mauricio lima/new york times

BUDAPEST — Hungary stunned migrants and European partners Tuesday by blocking asylum-seekers from its westbound trains, a move that raised new challenges for the European Union’s passport-free travel zone and could prompt many to rely on cross-border smugglers.

Hungary’s right-wing nationalist government defended its U-turn — just days after it started permitting migrants on the trains without any coherent immigration controls — as a necessary get-tough signal. Cabinet ministers told lawmakers that the nation, struggling to cope with more than 150,000 arrivals this year, was determined to seal its borders to unwelcome travelers from the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.

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Human rights activists criticized the action as futile and reckless, given that eastern European gangs have mobilized fleets of vehicles for illegally transporting migrants to Austria, Germany, and elsewhere — but at steep prices and in often dangerous conditions. They warned that blocking public transportation would increase risks of a repeat of last week’s tragedy, in which the bodies of 71 people, apparently suffocated, were found in the back of an abandoned truck near Vienna.

‘‘There is no logic behind what Hungary is doing: Yesterday they let migrants use the trains, and today they do not,’’ Gabor Gyulai, refugee program coordinator for a Budapest-based rights group called the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, told The Associated Press. ‘‘By not allowing them to move onward into Europe in a regular manner by buying a ticket, it’s a certainty that this new policy will push them into the hands of smugglers. It is a terrible outcome.’’

Confusion reigned at Budapest’s central Keleti train station as migrants arrived with tickets in hand, often costing more than 200 euros ($225), intending to take the morning service to Vienna and the German city of Munich. Barring their way were lines of maroon-capped Hungarian police, some wearing body armor.

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Police initially suspended all services at Keleti and blocked its grand main entrance. Within hours, nonmigrant passengers were allowed through a side entrance after showing passports, visas, or other national IDs, while Hungarian speakers were waved through.

Hungarian State Railways announced it would not sell tickets to customers without proper ID and, where required, visas. It said customers could buy tickets only for themselves unless they showed valid IDs and visas for every passenger.

The thwarted migrants faced another night near the station, which has become a concrete campsite as tens of thousands surged north this summer from non-EU member Serbia. Most began their journey weeks ago from Turkish refugee camps bordering the civil war in Syria and hope to reach Germany, which has offered asylum to war refugees and expects to receive 800,000 migrants this year alone.

Outside the station, more than 300 people stood, many shouting slogans or waving tickets, hoping that police might let them through. A few made makeshift signs pleading for help from the EU or United Nations. One man drew on a pizza box a picture of a moving train, a crying child, and the plaintive message ‘‘Germany!’’

Hundreds of smuggler vehicles appeared ready to fill any vacuum created by Hungary’s closure of train access.

An AP team at Hungary’s border with Serbia near midnight drove past scores of vehicles idling at two small gasoline stations. Migrants and refugees, who were walking into Hungary via a nearby rail line, said smuggler representatives in Serbian camps had told them of a taxi service that would charge 1,000 euros ($1,130) or more for a ride to Austria.

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In Berlin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that the EU’s longstanding commitment to passport-free travel, observed by all members except island nations Britain and Ireland, was under threat by the refusal of many nations in the bloc to share the load from this wave of asylum-seekers.

She defended Germany’s commitment to shelter war refugees, particularly from Syria, and said other nations needed to do so. The willingness to take more migrants and assess them for refugee status ‘‘should be the same in every European country,’’ she said.

But in Hungary, cabinet ministers said a bill being debated this week in Parliament would authorize the deployment of more than 3,000 troops along the Serbian frontier; the creation of jail-style, fast-track migrant centers to reject and deport migrants back to Serbia; and other measures intended to end Hungary’s status as an open back door into the EU.

Janos Lazar, chief of staff to Prime Minister Viktor Orban, blamed Germany and what he called other ‘‘left-wing governments’’ in Europe for encouraging the rush of migrants. ‘‘The defense of our borders is important,’’ he said.

Human rights advocates said Hungary’s open residential centers for asylum-seekers already were overcrowded, meaning migrants must find another way west. They predicted increased business for smugglers, and that Hungary would have to make another U-turn and permit migrants on trains again.

‘‘These refugees always will find their way to the West no matter what barriers are put in their way,’’ said Gyulai of the Helsinki rights committee. ‘‘This just makes them wait and suffer and spend their last pennies on train tickets they cannot use. This is simply done to give a fake impression to the EU that Hungary is ‘taking action,’ no matter what the human and legal consequences are.’’

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