Several European countries are instituting border controls to manage the flow of tens of thousands of refugees from the Middle East, presenting the most serious challenge to the continent’s open border policies in decades as the United States also prepares to accept migrants.
Germany, which has pledged to harbor the most refugees fleeing conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, temporarily suspended train arrivals from neighboring Austria on Sunday and dispatched additional officers to conduct border checks on cars and trucks.
An estimated 40,000 migrants entered the country over the weekend, straining local resources and raising concerns about security and human smuggling.
German lawmakers say as many as 1 million individuals could seek asylum in the country this year.
On Monday, Austria, Slovakia, and the Netherlands joined Germany in implementing additional border security measures. Austria deployed 2,200 troops to its eastern borders with Slovakia and Hungary, while Slovakia sent 220 officers to its own borders. Hungary has already stationed nearly 5,000 troops on its southern border with Serbia and is in the process of constructing a 100-mile fence to keep out migrants.
Additionally, Denmark temporarily closed rail service and a highway from Germany last week due to the influx of asylum seekers. Finland and Sweden are also reportedly increasing the presence of officials on their borders as hundreds of migrants arrive.
Most of the countries imposing the border controls are parties to the 1985 Schengen agreement, a pact that guarantees open travel throughout 26 nations with a single visa. The refugee crisis has raised questions about whether the agreement can continue.
"If temporary closures start becoming a de facto permanent set of border controls, we may be seeing the end of Schengen," Pieter Cleppe, head of the Brussels office of the think tank Open Europe, told the Washington Post.
While millions of refugees are seeking asylum from the devastating wars in Syria and Iraq, European security officials have expressed concerns about the potential for the Islamic State terrorist group to infiltrate the torrent of migrants. Dozens of homegrown terrorist suspects have already been arrested in European countries such as France for plotting attacks.
Human traffickers are also said to operate at border crossings into the European countries that are accepting refugees. One Austrian volunteer on the border told the network France 24 that "there are hundreds of smugglers."
"They will drive you a couple of kilometers, then put a knife to your throat and take all your money," the border worker said.
European countries are attempting to offer immediate relief to refugees while deferring requests from migrants looking for long-term economic opportunities. At a European Union meeting on Monday, ministers completed an initial agreement to redistribute 160,000 refugees from Italy, Greece, and Hungary to countries across the bloc.
The Obama administration announced last week that it will accept at least 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year to help address the crisis. U.S. officials could also raise the quota for refugee admissions from 75,000 to as high as 100,000.
Top U.S. officials have issued warnings about potential terrorist ties among migrants accepted by America. James Clapper, director of national intelligence, said last week at an intelligence community conference that the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, might seize on the refugee crisis as an opportunity to launch attacks.
"We don’t obviously put it past the likes of ISIL to infiltrate operatives among these refugees," he said.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the security concerns related to the admission of refugees.
Former administration officials have assailed President Obama for not doing more to halt the Syrian civil war, which provided a safe haven for the Islamic State and sparked the refugee crisis. Frederic Hof, a former special adviser on Syria for the administration, recently wrote that the White House "cannot acknowledge error."
"Having decided to leave millions of Syrians subject to barrel bombs, starvation sieges, mass terrorism, and collective punishment so as not to offend Iran, the administration (or more precisely, Europe) now reaps the whirlwind of hundreds of thousands of refugees," he said. "Yet instead of changing course, it whines about how much worse things would have been had other decisions been taken."