The 27-year-old Angolan who arrived in Portugal through Lisbon airport with three newborn babies and their mothers on Sunday (click here) should be on a plane back home today, writes tabloid Correio da Manhã.
The man is understood to have been expelled from a number of European countries for his .
perceived links with the trafficking of illegal immigrants.
The three women with whom he was travelling have all requested humanitarian asylum and are now housed in a temporary refugee facility with their babies, while the man has been presented before a magistrate and ‘freed’ to a holding complex at the airport, from which he will be escorted to the flight back to Angola.
Says CM, border control inspectors are watching all flights arriving from the former African colony and have dealt with over 4000 people as part of Operation Bambini, set up specifically to control the trafficking of children.
Operation Bambini has apparently ‘controlled’ the entry of 350 children, and will remain in place with “specific inspectors” until 2021.
It’s by no means clear at this point whether the babies that came into the country on Sunday were going to be offered for illegal adoptions, or whether they were simply being brought in with their mothers to remain in Europe illegally.
These questions may get answers from the women now requesting asylum.
The issues of Portugal being a door for the “trafficking of people into Europe” have been ever-present for years, with authorities here struggling at times to even hold on to the victims that they have ‘saved’ (click here).
