Get-out-of-jail-free card for foreign nationality offenders opened Hungary’s doors to human trafficking

Despite the existence of the border fence on the Serbia-Hungary border, smuggling illegal migrants through Hungary remains a thriving business – further helped by a recent decree of the Orbán-government that let over two thousand foreign human traffickers out of prison. We interviewed Hungarian citizens who were involved with a foreign-led human trafficking organization whose leader now runs free.

“My workplace was close to the address of my childhood friend, an Arab-Hungarian dual national. Sometimes he would come up to my place and we would start talking about people smuggling as a job,” recalled Tibor B., who in 2020 agreed to transport illegal migrants inside Hungary from the Serbian to the Austrian border area.

Though a successful business owner before his arrest, this was not the first time Tibor was involved in human trafficking: during the 2015 refugee crisis, he also drove asylum seekers stuck in Hungary toward Austria. He said that back then, the Hungarian police were more than forgiving trafficking gangs – criminal networks stretching across the Middle East and the Balkans who extort large fortunes from people trying to get to Western Europe and apply for asylum.

Tibor recalled an 2015 incident where the bus he was driving West broke down: „The police asked me if I was transporting migrants, I said yes, and they helped me to get the bus in working order so that I could continue.” Five years later, the police were less lenient: Tibor was arrested in 2021 and is now under threat of a prison sentence of over 5 years.

Hungarian perpetrators jailed while their foreign bosses walk free

This strictness however does not extend to the foreign organizers of human trafficking. In 2023, Hungary’s Orbán-government – which markets itself as a leader of Europe’s anti-immigration right wing – enacted a decree which resulted in over 2000 foreign nationals sentenced for people smuggling being abruptly let free. Officially, these perpetrators are to be expelled to their country of origin, where they are placed under „reintegrative custody”. In practice, the Hungarian government did not arrange any guarantees that the perpetrators remain under guard wherever they leave – meaning that in reality, they are simply allowed to walk free.

László D., an old friend of Tibor, also got involved in the foreign-led human trafficking group in 2020. He was just done serving a prison sentence for a previous, unrelated crime, and had a hard time finding employment in the midst of the pandemic, so he agreed to carry „packages” – a codeword people –  from the Serbian side of the Southern border to the border with Austria.

Tibor managed to quit after a few „deliveries” and has not come into contact with the leaders of the human trafficking „office”.  László ended up being involved in the gang for a longer period of time and worked directly for an Iraqi national known as A.M.

László said that one could make thousands of Euros for a single delivery, as A.M.’s men paid 1000 Euro for each migrant who got through.

He recalled that the gang used money and threats to convince him to keep working for them. „I get the instructions on where to go to pick up the money, get in the car next to the Arab, we stop in a parking lot, another man gets in, they call the big boss, who has a Hungarian interpreter next to him. We’re on speakerphone, and then he tells me that he’s been looking for me for a long time, I should work directly for him, give him my phone number. In the meantime, the third man, who got into the car, showed me a threatening message from his phone, saying that if I didn’t cooperate with them, they would cut the twins out of my girlfriend’s belly in front of me” recalled László, whose partner was expecting at the time.

The structure of the criminal organisation from court documents

Back to business

László testified that after the first few rides, he contacted a police officer’s acquaintance and gave information about the members of the criminal organization, hoping to reduce his sentence and get the authorities to help him leave the gang. He recalls that although the police often used the information he provided, such as phone numbers which were subsequently wiretapped.

According to László, his police contact encouraged him to get deeper into the organization, but after his eventual arrest, his role as an informant was not taken into account during the criminal proceedings, as all documents related to his role were classified. He is now looking at a 10 to 20-year prison sentence for an organizing role in a human trafficking organization.

Court documents received by Átlátszó unanimously named A.M. the head of the criminal organization and showed that the police were actively trying to find and identify him. Despite this, he was never arrested – at least not in the case of László and Tibor.

László says that during his 4-year stay in jail, he met A.M. who was arrested in a different people smuggling case. After getting out of jail, László learned through shared equivalences that A.M. was also set free due to the 2023 government decree. So was another organizer, a citizen of Iraq who worked directly to A.M.

According to court documents, he pleaded guilty in 2023 and received a 6-year prison sentence – only to immediately fall into the class of perpetrators to be transferred into „reintegrative custody.”

László and Tibor both say that the government decree essentially opened the door for foreign human traffickers to operate in Hungary with impunity. In jail, they met other arrested traffickers who were advised to quickly plead guilty and not consent to judgment so they would fall under the „reintegrative custody” decree and go home. László recalled one Ukrainian trafficker who, after getting his get-out-of-jail-free card in Hungary, returned home to rejoin a human trafficking organization as a recruiter.

No answers from the police

We sent questions to the national police’s (ORFK) press department on the issues covered in this report. We asked, for example, how many expelled people smugglers are detained in their home countries, and how many of them reoffended after their release.

We also asked whether they were aware of any cases of police officers helping civilians to transport asylum seekers to the Austrian border during the 2015 refugee crisis, and what assistance police can provide to those who assisted police as informants in the investigation or prosecution of a crime. At the time of publication of this article, we had not received any replies to these questions.