Portugal’s Constitutional Court found no breach of the Constitution in any of the contested provisions of the new Lei do Retorno, the law that rewrites the rules on the stay, detention and removal of foreign nationals. The ruling was unanimous, backed by all 13 judges.
Parliament passed the law on 17 July, on the last working day before the summer recess: in favour were PSD (the centre-right Social Democratic Party, in government), the liberals of Iniciativa Liberal and the Christian democrats of CDS-PP; the far-right Chega abstained; the entire left voted against. On 7 August President António José Seguro sent the text to the Constitutional Court for preventive review — the first such request of his presidency. Three things worried him: the length of detention, the position of families and children, and the right of asylum seekers to appeal.
The court disagreed with him. Over more than 160 pages the judges worked through the 11 questions the president had put to them and declared every contested provision constitutional. The court’s president, João Carlos Loureiro, stressed that the law arrives as part of the EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum, which took effect in June, and that the questions raised this time were substantially different from those on which the court had previously struck down provisions on family reunification.
How Portugal got here
The Lei do Retorno is the last major piece of the migration overhaul the AD coalition government has been pushing since 2025, with Chega’s support or acquiescence. The government’s argument throughout has been the same: fewer than 5% of return decisions in Portugal are actually enforced, one of the lowest rates in Europe, and the existing machinery does not allow removals to be carried through. That was illustrated in the autumn of 2025, when a group of migrants who had entered irregularly had to be released from temporary holding centres once the 60-day limit expired — after which most of them disappeared.
The first step was the Lei dos Estrangeiros, passed in July 2025. It closed the manifestação de interesse route (regularisation on the basis of working in the country without having obtained a visa first), tightened the conditions for family reunification, ended the simplified path to residence for citizens of CPLP states (the Community of Portuguese Language Countries) and restricted the job-seeker visa to highly qualified workers. The president at the time, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, referred the law to the Constitutional Court, which struck down five provisions on 8 August, most of them on family reunification. Parliament rewrote the text, and the revised law entered into force on 23 October 2025.
The second step was the new Lei da Nacionalidade. Its first version was also partly rejected by the court; parliament passed a second version on 1 April 2026, and Seguro signed it into law on 3 May, noting that he would have preferred a broader consensus and that the text carried the ideological marks of the moment. It has applied since 19 May: the residence requirement for naturalisation rose from five years to seven for citizens of Portuguese-speaking countries and to ten for everyone else, and citizenship by birth in Portugal became harder to obtain.
Each time, the pattern repeated: parliament passes, the president refers, the court removes some provisions, parliament rewrites. With the Lei do Retorno the pattern broke for the first time — the court removed nothing.
What changes
Detention of up to a year. The maximum period a foreign national can be held in a centro de instalação temporária (temporary holding centre, where people are placed ahead of removal) rises from the current two months to 180 days, extendable by a further 180 days if the person fails to cooperate with the authorities or if obtaining documents from third countries drags on. This is administrative detention within a return procedure, not a criminal penalty. The court acknowledged that it intrudes on personal liberty but found the measure permissible, adding that the 180 days are not a period the administration may manage at its own discretion: detention must be cut to the minimum necessary.
An appeal no longer always halts removal. Challenges to international protection decisions lose their suspensive effect and become merely devolutive — filing an appeal does not in itself freeze enforcement. In practice that means a person may in certain cases be removed from Portugal before a court has heard their challenge. The Constitutional Court held that this does not violate the right to judicial protection: a person can separately file an urgent interim application (ação cautelar) asking for the decision to be suspended where there is a risk of irreparable harm.
Families and children. The law allows the removal of a foreign national who has minor children with Portuguese nationality and, in certain cases, the removal of children under five born in Portugal. If one parent has to leave the country, a child may end up separated from that parent. The court held that having a Portuguese child is not an absolute bar to removing the parent, but neither does removal follow automatically: each case must be assessed individually, under judicial control and with the child’s best interests in view.
A veto is still possible
The law is not yet in force. The text now goes back to the Belém Palace, and it is worth keeping two decisions apart. The Constitutional Court answered a question about the constitutionality of the provisions, not about whether they are sound policy. Seguro no longer faces a legal obstacle to signing, but the political judgement remains his: he can promulgate the law, or he can impose a political veto and send it back to parliament.
The grounds for his doubts have not gone away. Referring the law to the court, Seguro wrote that fighting irregular migration and protecting the borders are legitimate aims, but that border security is not incompatible with human dignity, and he recalled that some of those arriving are fleeing wars and political persecution. He singled out as particularly questionable the extension of detention on the grounds of delays in obtaining documents from third countries — that is, for reasons beyond the detained person’s control. The court found those provisions constitutional; it did not settle whether they are reasonable.
This year has shown that Seguro uses both instruments: in June he imposed a political veto on a decree banning “ideological” flags on public buildings, while in May he signed the nationality law after setting out his objections in public. If he does send the law back, the governing coalition can override the veto in a second vote.
What to do if you hold a residence permit
To be entirely practical about it: there is no cause for panic. The law is aimed first of all at return and removal procedures for foreign nationals who are in Portugal without a legal basis. For anyone who has been living here on a residence permit, the distinction that matters is this: an expired card, or a delayed renewal, is not the same thing as a removal decision.
Three situations are worth separating.
Your permit has expired but you have applied for renewal, or your case is with AIMA (the Agency for Integration, Migration and Asylum). The new law does not by itself mean removal proceedings are starting against you.
AIMA has asked for extra documents, or there is a problem with the renewal. Do not ignore the requests, and keep every piece of evidence: appointments, payments, letters, recibos (receipts).
There is already a formal refusal, an order to leave the country or a return decision. In that case look immediately at the deadlines and at the scope for appeal.
The thing to do now is to work out your actual legal status rather than going by the date on your card. The state’s approach is indeed getting tougher, but the formula “my permit expired, so I can be detained and deported” is wrong.
This article was prepared with input from experts at our partner company, PassPortU.
