SOFIA (Reuters) - A Bulgarian court has sentenced a man to 11 months in jail for helping to bring more than 50 migrants, crammed into a van, across the EU border with Turkey.

Signaling its determination to tackle an influx that has overwhelmed its neighbors, European Union member Bulgaria is building a fence along its Turkish border and has deployed dozens of police officers, including at its borders with Macedonia and Serbia.

Bulgarian driver Kalcho Iliev was arrested on Monday after border police officers found some 54 people, including 16 children, from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan packed in a van near the Black Sea town of Ahtopol and close to the border with Turkey.

The regional court in Tsarevo also fined Iliev 2,000 levs ($1,150) as part of an agreement he has reached with the prosecutors, the chief prosecutor's office said in a statement.

Tens of thousands of migrants, most of them fleeing war and hardship in Syria, are trying to reach Germany and Hungary through the Balkans from Greece via Bulgaria's non-EU neighbors Macedonia and Serbia.

Bulgarian prosecutors have indicted over 200 Bulgarians for smuggling activities this year and Interior Minister Rumiana Bachvarova said on Friday that the measures have led to a decrease in attempts to cross its borders illegally. Bulgaria has detained some 17,000 migrants and asylum seekers since the start of the year, she said.

(Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)