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Portugal’s president enacts reform to speed up deportations of migrants
🇵🇾 Paraguay /Elections & Politics

Portugal’s president enacts reform to speed up deportations of migrants

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

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  • President António José Seguro enacted a law intended to speed up the deportation of migrants residing in Portugal without legal status.
  • Seguro had asked the Constitutional Court to review whether the law protected children’s best interests and made detention periods proportionate; the court ruled that it was constitutional.
  • The measure, approved by Parliament in July, forms part of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro’s tougher migration policy and will take effect after publication in the official gazette.

Portugal’s president, António José Seguro, has enacted a law designed to accelerate the expulsion of migrants in an irregular situation, after the Constitutional Court approved the measure over the weekend.

Seguro had asked the court to review the law because he said he had serious doubts about whether it protected the best interests of children and guaranteed proportionate detention periods for foreign citizens who had not committed a crime. The court ruled that the measure was not unconstitutional and clarified how courts and administrative authorities should interpret it.

had serious doubts about whether the best interests of the child were safeguarded and whether the proportionality of the duration of detention of foreign citizens who have not committed any crime was guaranteed by an administrative decision

— António José Seguro’s presidencyThe presidency explained why Seguro initially asked the Constitutional Court to review the migration law.

The law now must be published in Portugal’s Diário da República before it enters into force. The center-right government of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro introduced the bill in December 2025 as part of a broader tightening of migration policy.

The government says the measure will speed up deportation procedures and prevent the “abuse” of asylum mechanisms. Parliament approved it on July 17 after the far-right Chega party abstained, while the governing Social Democratic Party, CDS-PP and Liberal Initiative voted in favor.

abuse

— Portuguese governmentThe government used the term when describing the asylum mechanisms the law seeks to restrict.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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