Portugal's misleading immigration claims fact-checked

André Ventura, leader of the far-right Chega party, recently claimed that 20% of Portugal's current prisoners are foreigners, making a clear link between immigration and crime levels.

At a recent demonstration in Porto, Ventura said that crime in the city had increased by 9% in the past year and that 30% of arrests made in general are foreigners.

"We know that 20% of the current prison population are also foreigners," the Chega leader added.

An annual report by Portugal's internal security agency for the year 2023 shows that the vast majority of the country's prisoners are Portuguese with 83.3%. Foreigners account for 16.7% of inmates meanwhile, a ratio that the agency said remained "stable".

Among foreign inmates, Africans make up the highest proportion (45%), with Portuguese-speaking African nations such as Cape Verde, Angola and Guinea-Bissau being more prevalent.

Next came South American prisoners (30.6%), mostly from Brazil, and then Europeans (19.3%), with Romania and Spain standing out, the internal security agency said.

Of the total number of prisoners (12,193), 2,655 were in pre-trial detention compared to 9,538 convicted and serving a sentence. Almost 93% of prisoners were male, according to the data.

Additionally, of the roughly 46,000 people receiving criminal sentences identified by the security agency, only 11.1% were from countries other than Portugal.

On a separate occasion, in the country's parliament, Ventura said that 344 women were raped in Portugal during the first eight months of 2024, surpassing last year's figures.

He said that "many" of these offences were committed by immigrants, and accused the government of looking the other way.

Numbers from Portugal's Directorate-General of Prison Services (DGRSP) show that 131 people were serving prison sentences for rape as of 31 December 2023.

Of those, 104 were Portuguese nationals and 27 were foreigners. That puts the percentage of rapes committed by immigrants at just under 21% — a clear minority.

The proportion of foreigners living in Portugal has significantly increased over the past few years, according to stats from the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum.

The number of foreigners holding residency permits in Portugal rose from 480,300 in 2018 to 1,044,606 in 2023, official data shows, representing a percentage increase of 117.49%.

More data from the internal security agency meanwhile says that instances of residential burglary (-15.3%) consummated voluntary homicide (-7.2%), rape (-4.8%) and other thefts (-4%) all fell in the past year, suggesting there isn't necessarily a link between rising immigration and rising cases of those particular crimes. 

However, there were increases in cases of extortion (25.8%), kidnapping and hostage-taking (22%), and resisting an officer (13.2%).

Looking at crime more broadly, the DGRSP data shows that of the 2,939 individuals serving sentences for crimes against persons, 2,621 were Portuguese, while 300 were foreign nationals.