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Hungary reinstated its hardline immigration stance Tuesday: detaining all asylum-seekers and shipping them to camps in the south of the country.
The legislation was approved by the majority of Hungary’s lawmakers.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the policy was in response to recent terror attacks in Europe carried out by migrants.
"In the future, illegal immigrants must wait for the verdict on their asylum case in designated transit zones at the border," read Tuesday's bill, which was published on the Hungarian parliament's website.
The legislation will bar asylum-seekers from moving around the country while their applications are processed. The only exception is if they wish to go back over the border to Serbia.
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The move is a reinstatement of the eastern European country's practice of detaining asylum-seekers, which it halted in 2013 under pressure from Brussels, the U.N. refugee agency and the European Court of Human Rights. Many rights groups are gravely concerned.
"Elderly, sick people, as well as families with children, may also be detained (in the containers)," Amnesty International said, as reported by AFP.
It’s of little surprise Prime Minister Orban has enacted the policy — he counts U.S. President Donald Trump as someone he admires. Orban has also espoused Islamophobic rhetoric in the past, saying that Muslims in Europe pose a security risk to the continent and that they are destroying its Christian heritage.
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