Police in Hungary, which is also in the EU’s Schengen zone of border-free travel, said about 500 migrants had been detained after crossing into the south of the country from Croatia on Thursday.
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More than 4,000 migrants were sent from Croatia to Hungary on Friday after officials said they could not cope with 17,000 who have arrived since Wednesday.
Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said the country had “limited capacity”.
One migrant can be heard shouting: “We are real people“.
Angry police try to control thousands of exhausted refugees sitting on grass fields and crowding patrol stations along the road of this Croatian border town of Beli Manestir.
He said at a news conference: “What else can we do?”
On Thursday, citing “personal reasons”, Manfred Schmidt, president of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, resigned under pressure from representatives of all 16 German federal states, which accused him of grossly underestimating the number of expected migrants and, in turn, failing to provide appropriate resources for their arrival. Croatia says that seven of its eight borders with Serbia have been blocked. “But go on. Not because we don’t like you, but because this is not your final destination”.
Hungary’s decision to close its borders to Syrian refugees has intensified the growing crisis enveloping Europe.
Meanwhile, aides to Pope Francis said he was putting up a Syrian refugee family from Damascus in a Vatican apartment.
Nineteen Croatian buses carried migrants across the border Friday to Beremend, Hungary, where they were put on Hungarian buses.
But at Ilaca in Croatia, migrants boarded trains – reportedly bound for Slovenia and Austria – on the next step on their marathon voyage.
The right-wing Orban has come under heavy criticism for Hungary’s treatment of the migrants, particularly over the police’s handling of clashes at the flashpoint Serbian border crossing of Roszke on Wednesday.
The crowds, who were chanting “we want to go”, had gathered in the baking heat to wait for transport on from the border.
Many passing through Croatia would prefer to move onward to Slovenia and then Germany.
Women were wailing and police tried to help children as masses of people pushed their way out of the holding area set up for processing.
The country stopped rail traffic coming from the south after finding 150 migrants on a Zurich-bound train.
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The stalled train threatens to become the latest symbol of an European Union deeply divided over how to handle the influx of hundreds of thousands of people mostly fleeing war and poverty in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
