AIMA delays deport scholarship student who came to Portugal as minor with family – Portugal Resident

A 19-year-old who arrived in Portugal as a minor and lived in the country for two years with his parents and younger brother has been deported to Brazil after delays by immigration agency AIMA prevented his family from regularising his status in time.

Kauê Matos was placed on a flight to Brazil last night after spending four days detained in the international area of Lisbon airport, according to lawyer Renato Teixeira, who represents the family.

He is now staying with his maternal grandmother in São Paulo state and is said to be “deeply shaken” by the enforced separation from his parents and brother, who remain in Portugal.

Kauê arrived in Portugal at the age of 17. His parents applied for residence permits under the former expression of interest system, intending to follow this with a family reunification application for their eldest son, who was still a minor at the time.

Two years ago, AIMA was legally required to decide such cases within 90 working days, Teixeira told Lusa. Instead, the family waited approximately two years for a response.

By the time the decision came, Kauê was 19 and had lost the right to qualify for family reunification as a minor.

His remaining option was to seek a student residence permit, as he was attending secondary school in Figueira da Foz. But AIMA had removed the relevant application facility from its online platform, leaving applicants to seek a court order simply to obtain an appointment, the lawyer said.

Kauê’s parents could not afford legal representation and spent months attempting to contact AIMA by telephone and email, without success.

The teenager subsequently received a scholarship from his school to take part in an Erasmus programme in Ireland. When he returned to Portugal on Sunday, border authorities at Humberto Delgado Airport established that he did not hold a valid residence permit and ordered his detention and removal.

Teixeira said Kauê was held at the airport for four days, sleeping on a mattress on the floor and unable to shower. He could speak to his family only by telephone, and his mother was allowed to see him once.

The family contacted Renato Teixeira on Monday. He filed proceedings seeking to compel AIMA to schedule an appointment for Kauê’s residence application, followed by an injunction intended to suspend the removal order.

The second application could be submitted only after the first had been formally registered by the court, further reducing the time available.

According to the lawyer, the immigration inspector responsible for the case delayed Kauê’s removal and allowed several Brazil-bound flights to leave without him, hoping to give the courts time to rule. The inspector had reportedly agreed to release the teenager if AIMA was ordered to schedule an appointment.

No decision arrived in time.

Although urgent applications of this kind should be considered within 48 hours, Teixeira concedes that Portugal’s administrative courts are overwhelmed by an explosion in immigration-related litigation.

Since AIMA removed the possibility of filing certain applications online — while remaining notoriously difficult to reach through other channels — administrative courts have reportedly been receiving between 1,000 and 1,500 new cases every day.

Kauê was ultimately placed aboard a flight to Brazil before either of his legal challenges had been decided.

His defence is now waiting for the courts to rule on the outstanding cases before deciding how to bring him back to Portugal. Options include applying for a student visa through the Portuguese consulate in Brazil or returning if AIMA is finally ordered to schedule the appointment his family had been unable to obtain.

The case leaves a young man deported for lacking a permit he sought to obtain, after the State’s own delays allowed him to age-out of one legal route and its inaccessible appointment system blocked another. That is the darkest part of this dreadful story: Kauê did not evade the system. The system simply failed to answer until it had created the very irregularity that has been used against him. 

Source material: noticiasaominuto