A major operation by the Judicial Police (PJ) targeting illegal immigration networks led to the arrest, early on Tuesday morning, of ten National Republican Guard (GNR) officers and one Public Security Police (PSP) officer, along with several business owners in the Alentejo region. The suspects are being investigated for aiding illegal immigration, forgery, tax fraud, and money laundering.
According to information gathered by journalists at the JN newspaper, the ten GNR officers and the singular PSP agent are believed to be part of a group that puppeteered a temporary work agency to exploit vulnerable immigrants. Members of the security forces were allegedly deployed to intimidate these workers and force them to accept exploitative labour conditions. They are also suspected of providing an informal “private security” service to keep illegal migrant workers under control on agricultural estates and in the housing where they were placed.
According to the Central Department of Investigation and Prosecution (DCIAP), the officers were paid to “exercise control and surveillance over foreign workers” while acting outside their professional remit and “in breach of the duties inherent to their public functions”.
The GNR officers and the PSP officer are also accused of acting as a barrier to seeking aid leading exploited immigrants to believe that any complaint made to the authorities would be futile and would “not be a viable alternative to react to the abuses they had suffered or were still suffering”, the DCIAP added.
The alleged scheme involved setting up a temporary work agency that preyed on the vulnerability of immigrants, “exploiting them, charging for accommodation and food, and keeping them under coercion through threats, including several incidents of physical assault”, the PJ said on Tuesday morning. The arrests and searches form part of Operation Safra Justa.
At least 100 PJ inspectors are involved in the operation across various parts of the Alentejo and other regions of the country, carrying out both residential and non-residential searches.
Victims reportedly accepted work without formal contracts and were paid wages “below market rates for the jobs they were performing, in labour-intensive sectors such as agriculture”, according to the DCIAP. The network’s ringleaders allegedly deducted excessive sums from workers’ pay for accommodation, transport, water, electricity and documentation, while also withholding tax payments owed to the state.
From the early hours of Tuesday morning, authorities executed around 50 search warrants and 17 arrest warrants in Beja, Portalegre, Figueira da Foz, and Porto.
JN has learned that PJ investigators arrived in the village of Cabeça Gorda, in Beja, at around 4.30am. At the same time, teams searched the homes of the suspected officers as well as the offices and residences of agricultural business owners in the Alentejo.
The case centres on a criminal organisation that controlled hundreds of foreign workers, most of them living in Portugal without legal documentation. “Over several months, the PJ carried out numerous investigative steps that yielded evidence and incriminating material, allowing us to map out how this violent, mafia-style group operated. In this operation, the PJ also had the collaboration and support of the GNR,” the force said.
On X (formerly Twitter), Socialist Party MP Eva Cruzeiro wrote that “Portugal cannot tolerate 21st-century slavery, not within the security forces, nor anywhere else.” For the parliamentarian, the involvement of law-enforcement officers in the exploitative act “shakes” public trust.
“The truth is simple and harsh: without immigrant labour, much of our modern agriculture would collapse. Yet many of these workers live and work in conditions none of us would accept for our own. And when agents of the state actively participate in the abuse, it undermines society’s confidence as a whole,” she said.
According to a statement released by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP), the suspects “took advantage of the vulnerable, in terms of their documentary, social and economic situations, of third-country nationals, the vast majority undocumented, in order to extract substantial financial gain”.
The public prosecutor adds that these foreign workers were prepared to accept jobs without formal contracts, earning wages “below market rates for the tasks they performed, in labour-intensive sectors such as agriculture”. Meanwhile, the suspects “failed to pay the amounts promised, deducting instead arbitrarily imposed sums for accommodation, transport, water, electricity and documentation”.
As in other similar cases, this tactic is common in human-trafficking schemes, leaving migrants “trapped” in the situation. Because members of the security forces were involved, victims were threatened into silence.
Source: LUSA/JN
Photo credit: Teixeira Correia
