Emotions swing from forlorn to triumphant and back again on this migrant-besieged frontier, as thousands of exhausted trekkers achieve one goal only to face another daunting challenge. Before arriving here, many have already slipped through Syria's border into Turkey lugging children or elderly parents, crossed the choppy seas to Greece and navigated the Balkan nations of Macedonia and Serbia by foot, bus or train. No razor-wire fence is going to stop them from entering Hungary, the gateway to the 28-nation European Union, and beginning what could be a yearslong legal battle to prove their right to refugee status. Over the past year Hungary, once a front-line bastion against invasions by the 13th-century Mongols and the 16th-century Ottoman Turks, has become the most popular back door for Arabs, Asians and Africans to reach the heart of the EU without facing further passport or visa checks. Hungarian police in sports utility vehicles gun their engines on the dirt road beside the razor wire, trying to catch the migrants before they escape into sun-bronzed fields of corn and sunflowers, disappearing quickly from view into the 10-foot high crops. At night, a lone police helicopter tries to follow groups by searchlight, but usually the migrants can reach the far side of fields without a police tail. Here, because the train tracks cannot be blocked with fencing, Hungarian police have created a bottleneck entry for migrants. Many travelers, chiefly citizens of war-ravaged Syria, spend days camped out in Serbia debating whether to slip under the wire by night, then into the arms of paid smugglers for a final journey by vehicle to Western Europe — or to walk openly down the train track into the unwelcoming arms of Hungary's police and immigration staff. Some pause and pitch tents just yards from two whitewashed stones bearing Cyrillic letters marking their exit from Serbia. [...] amid rows of olive drab canvas tents, the migrants are fingerprinted, photographed and identified by name, hometown and birthdate — an often inaccurate effort, given that most have chosen to dump their national IDs long ago. Once Hungarian police come into view, pepper spray and clubs in their belts, nervous migrants stop beside the cornfields right on the border, where campfire-blackened, half-eaten cobs lie strewn all about.
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