Interior Minister José Luis Carneiro said this Friday that the government has reached an agreement with the city council of Odivelas to establish a temporary reception center for asylum seekers.
“It was decided to build a new temporary accommodation center on land provided by the municipality of Odivelas in Oia, with an investment estimated at more than three million euros,” José Luis Carneiro told reporters on the sidelines of a restructuring meeting. Portugal’s border control system.
Entry refusals result in many foreigners applying for asylum status to the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum (AIMA), and if it is rejected they can still appeal to the courts.
This situation, the minister admitted, “leads to an overload of demand in temporary accommodation centers or in the so-called international zone,” where it is very crowded, especially during the Christmas season.
The goal is to “create a temporary installation center that will strengthen our existing capabilities” at the airports of Lisbon, Porto and Faro.
These centers have undergone “improvement work” by creating “men’s and women’s wings to guarantee greater intimacy and better conditions of dignity for foreign nationals” awaiting visas.
Until there is a final response, these foreigners will wait at these centers and if the request is rejected, they will be returned to their countries of origin.
In his speech, José Luis Carneiro called on AIMA to continue to “make every effort to ensure a rapid response to the needs” of the police authorities, admitting that the services were under “very much pressure during the Christmas period” due to long queues. is waiting and people waiting at the international airport and existing centers are completely full.
“This is one of the lessons we have learned,” and “what we must ensure is that we cannot let our guard down, improve and improve the system as a whole,” Carneiro said, acknowledging that there are still challenges that need to be addressed solve in “access to databases with the necessary security.”