“Police efforts must focus on prevention. Portugal’s participation in the European free movement area demands stronger international cooperation and stricter border control,” said Maria Lúcia Amaral at the ceremony marking the 158th anniversary of the Public Security Police.

“Portugal will remain an open, diverse, and welcoming country—but always with clear rules that uphold national sovereignty and international obligations.”

In this sense, the minister considered in her speech, “the creation of the National Unit for Foreigners and Borders of PSP represents a decisive milestone in migration, asylum and return policy towards a more serious and therefore more humane and more effective policy”.

The government's proposal for the creation of the new unit, which is nicknamed the 'mini-SEF', will be discussed on Friday in the Assembly of the Republic, after the PS and Chega rejected a similar proposal in the last legislature.

Regarding the lack of resources in the PSP for this unit, Maria Lúcia Amaral said that it will only be possible to respond to operational issues, resources, personnel and logistics "when there is a fixed text approved and promulgated that defines without further discussion what powers will be assigned to this unit".

The Government insists on the measure, which will reinstate a specific unit within the PSP, after the end of the Foreigners and Borders Service in 2023, and its functions were distributed among the PSP, GNR, PJ and the then-created Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), which became responsible for the return, a system that, according to the Government, does not work and does not allow for the enforcement of orders to expel immigrants.

According to the Government, this new unit will be “a border police force” to control the borders at entry, monitor immigrants throughout the country and remove “those who do not comply with the rules”.