According to a joint statement from the Presidency and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, 37 of the 38 Moroccan citizens who illegally entered Portugal on August 8 were released from the Temporary Installation Center (CIT) where they were being held.

According to the same source, after leaving the CIT and given the suspension of their appeals or requests for assistance in the asylum process, the foreign citizens are housed by Social Security.

Current Portuguese law establishes a maximum detention period of 60 days in CIT, and after that period, the State is obliged to release the individuals, even if the removal process is still ongoing.

"During this period, two of the citizens accepted voluntary abandonment, and one of them withdrew before its implementation. The remaining citizens have resorted to delaying measures provided for in the current law to delay their forced removal," the Government emphasised in the statement.

"To this end, they filed applications for asylum or international protection, filed judicial appeals with suspensive effects, and failed to present documentation (which makes it difficult to accept their return in their country of origin)," it added.

“Limitations”

The Government emphasised that the judicial and administrative authorities, the PSP (Public Security Police) and the Agency for Integration, Migration, and Asylum (AIMA), acted "with all possible speed, but within the limitations imposed by current law, including in the detention and rejection of asylum applications."

Specifically, AIMA opened the removal processes from national territory "in the days immediately following their presentation to a judge, and rejected the asylum applications in less than seven days."

The government also emphasised, in the press release, that it has warned over the past year about "the objective lack of legal, material, and organisational conditions for the rapid and effective execution of forced removals in Portugal."

The government identified three "bottlenecks to the speed of removal," emphasising that with the abolition of the SEF (Foreigners and Borders Service), the task of return was assigned to AIMA and the lack of capacity in the CIT.

Another problem identified by the government is "the current legal framework for return in Portugal that induces and allows for significant delays in the process, with excessively long deadlines, duplication of procedural phases, and administrative and judicial appeals that can be used as delaying measures."

The Presidency and the Internal Administration also emphasized that the Government has been working to resolve bottlenecks, explaining that the authority to return has already been legally transferred from AIMA to the National Unit for Foreigners and Borders (UNEF) of the PSP.

This change occurred in the summer of this year "because the first attempt at the end of 2024 was defeated in Parliament, with votes from the two largest opposition parties."

New centres

The Government also highlighted that it has already approved financing for the construction of two new CITs, in the Lisbon and Porto regions, whose implementation is now being handled by the PSP and will allow for an additional 300 vacancies to the 85 currently existing.

"The Government's first legislative attempt to accelerate the removal regime for illegal immigrants was also rejected by Parliament at the end of 2024, again, with votes from the two largest opposition parties," it further states.

The new bill to revise the return regime announced by the Government, to speed up deadlines, reduce administrative phases and delaying procedures, will be presented in October, the Ministry also guaranteed.