Arrests over illegal immigration network that helped thousands // Train strike hits final week of election campaign

Portuguese news in English on Tuesday, May 13, 2025.

Arrests over illegal immigration network that helped thousands

Do you have an expired residence card? If you’re a citizen of the EU, the family member of an EU citizen, or from a Portuguese-speaking country (CPLP) you can request an appointment using a new form that AIMA has set up. The best information in English is on the AIMA facebook.

More than 10,000 immigrants have allegedly been given residency in Portugal or benefited in their application thanks to a network set up to offer fraudulent documents and services, Público reports. Thirteen people, including a lawyer and a Foreign Affairs Ministry “mole”, were arrested on Friday on suspicion of a range of crimes including assisting illegal immigration, document falsification, corruption and money laundering. The Judiciary Police (PJ) investigation claims to have found “complex schemes” set up in the origin countries promising a work contract, NIF, Social Security number, criminal history check and other services. PJ Centro directorate boss Avelino Lima said some paid €15,000 and many were left in debt. In some cases, the immigrants could have gotten the documents through legitimate channels but they knew the group could provide them quicker and without margin for error. The group is suspected to have made millions since 2022, operating during the period of both the Foreigners and Border Service (SEF) and Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA).

About 50% of the 446,000 pending applications AIMA inherited from SEF under the now-scrapped expressions of interest pathway won’t be granted residency, the Ministry of the Presidency tells Diário de Notícias. An official source said 171,000 were thrown out because the applicants didn’t respond to a letter and card from AIMA, in many cases likely because they’d already left the country. Many of the cases were pending for at least two years and some more than four. Of the other 275,000, the ministry said the majority had shown up to deliver documents and have their biometric data taken, and 141,000 of those applications had been decided, including the 18,000 rejections announced last week. Some were refused after having already tried for residency in another Schengen Zone country, while others had criminal histories that didn’t check out or didn’t pay enough for the visa. The other 134,000 processes are still being analysed.

Photo: Threeohsix.

The coordinator of the Solidariedade Imigrante (Solim) association tells Expresso he knows of hundreds of people who’ve been refused residency because of an alert in the Schengen Information System (SIS), often outdated. That’s the case for Samim, who didn’t fly home to Bangladesh for the death of his mother, father or brother because he was waiting for residency and didn’t want to be barred from returning. He arrived in Portugal in 2022 after travelling by land via other parts of Europe from Bangladesh. He had been stopped in France on his way here and applied for asylum out of fear authorities there would send him back. He expected to be rejected but didn’t realise that years later, the SIS alert that decision sparked would be the reason for his refusal of Portuguese residence. Solim’s Farid Ahmed Patwary said many immigrants in his situation didn’t know there was any restrictions on their movement and didn’t inform the original country they were leaving. Samim, who had been working in greenhouses in Odemira on the Alentejo coast, asked France to cancel the alert but didn’t get any response.