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Budapest, Hungary: Hungary stunned migrants and European partners Tuesday by blocking asylum-seekers from its westbound trains, a move that raised new challenges for the EU's passport-free travel zone and could drive many into the reckless hands of cross-border smugglers.

Hungary's right-wing nationalist government defended its U-turn — just days after it started permitting migrants on the trains without any coherent immigration controls at all — as necessary to send a get-tough signal. Cabinet ministers told lawmakers that the nation, struggling to cope with more than 150,000 arrivals this year, was determined to seal its borders to unwelcome travelers from the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

Human rights activists criticized the action as futile and reckless, given that eastern European gangs have mobilized fleets of vehicles for illegally transporting migrants to Austria, Germany and elsewhere — but at steep prices and in often dangerous conditions. They warned that blocking public transportation would increase risks of a repeat of last week's tragedy when the bodies of 71 people, apparently suffocated, were found in the back of an abandoned truck near Vienna, Austria.

"There is no logic behind what Hungary is doing: Yesterday they let migrants use the trains, and today they do not," Gabor Gyulai, refugee program coordinator for a Budapest-based rights group called the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, told The Associated Press. "By not allowing them to move onward into Europe in a regular manner by buying a ticket, it's a certainty that this new policy will push them into the hands of smugglers. It is a terrible outcome."

Confusion reigned at Budapest's central Keleti train station as migrants arrived with tickets in hand, often costing 200 euros ($225) each or more, intending to take the morning service to Vienna and the southern German city of Munich. Barring their way were lines of maroon-capped Hungarian police, some of them in body armor.

Police initially suspended all services at Keleti and blocked its grand main entrance. Within hours, non-migrant passengers were allowed through a side entrance after showing passports, visas or other national IDs, while Hungarian speakers were waved through.

Hungarian State Railways announced it would not sell tickets to customers without proper ID and, where required, visas. It said customers could buy tickets only for themselves unless they showed valid IDs and visas for every passenger.

The thwarted migrants faced another night near the station, which has become a concrete campsite as tens of thousands surged north this summer from non-EU member Serbia. Most began their journey weeks ago from Turkish refugee camps bordering the civil war in Syria and hope to reach Germany, which has offered asylum to war refugees and expects to receive a staggering 800,000 migrants this year alone.

Outside the station, more than 300 people stood, many shouting protest slogans or waved tickets, hoping that police might let them through. A few made makeshift signs pleading for help from the EU or United Nations. One man drew on a pizza box a picture of a moving train, a crying child and the plaintive message "Germany!"

Hundreds of smuggler vehicles appeared ready to fill any vacuum created by Hungary's closure of train access.

Human rights advocates called Hungary's flip-flopping actions incoherent. They said its open residential centers for asylum-seekers already were overcrowded, meaning migrants must find another way west. They predicted increased business for smugglers, and that Hungary would have to make another U-turn and permit migrants on trains again.

"These refugees always will find their way to the West no matter what barriers are put in their way," said Gyulai of the Helsinki rights committee. "This just makes them wait and suffer and spend their last pennies on train tickets they cannot use. This is simply done to give a fake impression to the EU that Hungary is 'taking action,' no matter what the human and legal consequences are."

"This is crazy," said Baba Mujhse, a Egyptian-Hungarian volunteer in the station. He carried a boy who got separated from his family in the uproar. He said the decision to block migrants from the trains was "not a solution to anything."

Also Tuesday, Greece's coast guard said it rescued nearly 1,200 migrants, significantly more than usual, off its eastern Aegean islands in the past 24 hours. More than 2,000 migrants have drowned this year, including 200 last week, chiefly when trying to reach Italy's southernmost islands from Libya.