Nine of the 17 migrants who escaped from a military outpost in Tavira yesterday (click here) have already been caught, but eight remain at large.
As the manhunt for the remaining missing migrants continues, the president of the syndicate of SEF border authority inspectors has said that SEF inspectors lack the “adequate training and the means” to guard prisoners.
“There is a lack of a specific security career which was extinct. SEF inspectors are a fallback solution to guard prisoners,” Acácio Pereira told Rádio Renascença.
He also said that a military outpost is not an adequate location to keep migrants who have entered the country illegally.
As the union boss pointed out, Portugal’s only migration detention centre is “completely crowded”.
Using military outposts as detention centres for migrants “is neither a desirable nor dignified solution for a country of rule of law like ours, which should adequately welcome and integrate migrants and treat them according to international laws”, he said.
As reported yesterday, the 17 migrants pulled off their ‘great escape’ in the early hours of yesterday morning by using bedsheets as ropes to escape through a window of the outpost they were being held at.
The Ministry of Internal Administration has requested the launch of an inquiry into the escape, while the manhunt for the remaining missing migrants continues.
