For many illegal migrants a Serbian village on the pastoral border with Hungary is the last hurdle blocking their dream of crossing into the European Union and starting a more prosperous life.

During the Communist era, the Iron Curtain — in reality, fences topped by barbed wire patrolled by guards authorised to shoot intruders dead — sealed the frontier.

Now, around the village of Horgos, only occasional markers denote the Hungarian-Serbian frontier, the flat, rural divide between the prosperity of the EU and the rest of the world.

Serbia has stepped up efforts to patrol the border as a condition of making progress in its own goal of gaining EU membership. Last year, Brussels granted Serbian citizens visa-free travel after Belgrade promised to crack down on crime and improve control of hitherto porous borders.

An unshaven Afghan man in his 20s wearing track-suit pants recently paid the price for Serbia’s bolstered efforts. He was nabbed at the border and taken to a nearby detention facility.

“I have travelled from Afghanistan to Syria, then to Turkey, and from Turkey to Serbia,” he said.

Like most migrants at the facility, he was reluctant to talk, fearing prosecution at home or revenge by human traffickers. Most of these would-be immigrants pay 2,000-3,000 euros to join a criminal guide across the frontier.

“Primarily, they are from Afghanistan, Palestine, Georgia or other Asian countries. A smaller number comes from Kosovo,” said Miroljub Trivunovic, a Serbian border policeman.

Earlier this month, Serbian police arrested nine suspected members of an organised crime group involved in human trafficking. In 2009 it filed 51 criminal charges in other trafficking cases, according to Interior Minister Ivica Dacic.

The Serbian Interior Ministry says they have arrested 186 illegal migrants in the Horgos frontier area since January.

As Serbia has tried to accelerate its bid to join the EU since 2008 and toughened its border patrols, the steady tide of EU-bound migrants has eased, officials say. According to police data, many migrants now travel instead from Kosovo to Albania and finally across the Adriatic Sea to Italy.

NIGHT PATROL

Every night, a border police unit from the northern Serbian city of Subotica, near the Hungarian broder, patrols more than 180 kilometres (100 miles) of the boundary. Admittedly, it’s a wide goalpost for a limited number of goalies, but Hungarian officials and technology help supplement the effort.

The most common place for border-running is around Horgos, near the official Serbia-Hungary border crossing. Illegal migrants reach Horgos by bus or rail and wait for nightfall at a nearby gas station.

At night, their adventure starts. Migrants run through corn and wheat fields, or sometimes swim across rivers and canals, trying to get into Hungary.

Their attempts were moderately successful until recently when Serbian police received an EU grant for six SUV vehicles equipped with thermal-imaging cameras, global positioning and laser rangefinders.

A patrol may might wait in ambush for hours for would be-immigrants to come within range. After they’re spotted, another police patrol moves in for the arrest. Frequently Hungarian colleagues are involved in joint policing operations.

Migrants are typically sentenced to 30 days in jail and then sent to a holding facility in a Belgrade suburb.

“First we have to establish their identities: who are they, from which country, their way of entering Serbia, their intentions, why did they come and where do they plan to go,” said Dragan Dubljevic, head of the detention camp.

Dubljevic said this stage of the procedure may take months, especially if migrants are from countries with no embassies in Serbia or its immediate neighbours.

Some of them seek eventually asylum in Serbia, which applied last year to join the EU. But the U.N. refugee agency estimates there are 17,000 de facto stateless people in Serbia who cannot benefit from citizenship rights because of a lack of documentation.

(Writing by Aleksandar Vasovic, editing by Adam Tanner and Mark Heinrich)