AT LEAST 21 immigrants living illegally in the south of Portugal will be deported, following a recent operation carried out by the Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF), the office for foreigners and border control, in which inspections were made at workplaces in the Algarve and Alentejo.
In a statement released by the SEF, the inspections took place last week at a building site, a warehouse and five restaurants – all in the Algarve – and at a brothel in Beja (Alentejo). During the investigation, 67 people were identified, among them Portuguese, Brazilians, Russians, Angolans, Chinese, Cape Verdians, Romanians, Guineans and Ukrainians. The SEF also confirmed that many of those people found living in the Algarve illegally are Brazilian women who have been working in the Loulé area.
The companies which were employing the illegal immigrants will receive fines amounting to a total of more than 22,000 euros and be obliged to pay travel costs to return the employees to their home countries.
