Italy is pushing hard to slow the flow of illegal migrants headed there along the so-called 'Balkans route.' Patrols have been stepped up. And it's threatening to build a fence along the border with Slovenia - angering people on both sides. All this while thousands remain stranded. CGTN's Aljosa Milenkovic reports from one border chokepoint.

Croatian border police are carefully watching any suspicious movements across the border, in Bosnia. They are the EU's first line of defense against thousands of migrants trying to illegally cross into Croatia, on their way to Slovenia and finally Italy. Their main task is to serve as a visual deterrent to those considering an illegal trek across this small section of the border, but they also intervene physically when needed.

DAMIR BUTINA HEAD OF BORDER POLICE IN CETINGRAD "Last year we had just over 50 registered illegal border crossings, while just in the first six months of this year we had 179. So we do have an increase in numbers. But we are acting only as the first line, and mostly as deterrence. We are monitoring the territory of Bosnia and if we see groups of migrants preparing to cross the border, we are deploying our officers to that location."

At the Maljevac border crossing, Croatia erected this massive border fence, to stop migrants intent on forcing their way into the country. It's a response in part to what happened here last October, when hundreds of migrants clashed with security forces. Just a few kilometers away, on the outskirts of Velika Kladuša is a camp currently housing over 500 migrants. During the winter when the weather closed all the backroads into Croatia, the population peaked at nearly one-thousand - all men.

ALJOSA MILENKOVIC VELIKA KLADUŠA "For thousands of migrants this is the farthest point they can reach on their long and tedious journey. Desmond Happy from Cameroon is one of them. He's stranded here for nine months, all that time trying and failing to reach end destination."

He doesn't want to stay here as he feels unwelcome.

DESMOND HAPPY MIGRANT FROM CAMEROON "I'm not safe. Because for example when going to town, is like you have limited time in town to be in town. The police will come and say: 'Leave, leave. What you're doing here? Leave, leave.' Then going into a coffee shop to have like something to eat - you're not being accepted."

And that's not the only problem Desmond and many others accommodated in this former window factory barracks are facing. There is a high-level of violence among migrants of various ethnicities and often-times Bosnian authorities can do little to stop it.

PETER VAN DER AUWERAERT CHIEF OF MISSION, IOM IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA "If a migrant, and there is an example, one migrant murdered another migrant. That person did not get convicted, because the judge decided that given the fact that he didn't had a passport, he couldn't say whether the person was really person A or not. The question was not that he committed a crime, because the judge confirmed that there is enough evidence to say that he committed a crime."

With Slovenia and Italy increasing border controls, officials at the International Organization for Migration say they fear the number of migrants stranded in Bosnia will continue to rise, further straining resources and complicating Europe's migrant problem. Aljosa Milenkovic, CGTN, Velika Kladuša.