Illegal immigrants use Portugal as secondary route to "make the leap" to Ireland
João Ribeiro, deputy national director of the PSP and head of the National Foreigners and Borders Unit, told the Portuguese news agency that irregular immigrants are arriving in major Portuguese cities, using trains and buses as means of transportation.
According to the police official, some of these immigrants do not intend to stay in Portugal, using the country only as a transit point destined for other European countries.
A special international operation carried out at Portela airport, in Lisbon, made it possible to detect, over a one-year period, more than 200 irregular immigrants heading to Ireland.
This situation shows that Portugal has been used as a secondary route by illegal immigration networks to facilitate the entry of people into Ireland, possibly avoiding tighter controls on other direct routes.
