An Azorean Held by US Immigration for Almost a Month Is Refusing Food, and Lisbon Cannot Give His Family a Date

A 39-year-old man born on Terceira has spent almost a month in United States immigration detention and has been refusing food for four days. Hugo Freitas de Sousa was stopped at the American border as he re-entered from Canada. He is being held at an ICE facility in Tacoma, Washington. Portugal's Foreign Ministry says it is following the case but cannot say when it will end.

How he came to be detained

Freitas de Sousa has lived almost his whole life in the United States. He is not an American citizen, and his residence visa had expired. In recent years his trips back to Portugal had been regular, including work as a youth football coach.

He had travelled to the Azores for a cousin's wedding. Returning, he routed through Canada rather than flying direct, on a friend's advice that re-entry that way would be simpler with the authorisation he held. That authorisation was an ESTA, the electronic travel permit that admits nationals of visa-waiver countries, Portugal among them, for short stays.

An ESTA is a permission to seek entry, not a guarantee of it. At the land border his phones were confiscated. According to his partner, Joyce Hernandez, who described the sequence to RTP, officers concluded from what they found that he intended to stay longer than a short visit, in part because he said he was trying to see his son. A removal flight was subsequently booked; a delay stopped him boarding.

What the consulate can and cannot do

Asked about the case, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it has been following the detained citizen's situation closely, and that the Consulate General in San Francisco is in recurrent contact with the competent American authorities. Those authorities have said the process is under way, but the ministry added that it is not possible, as of now, to indicate concrete deadlines.

That is the honest limit of consular assistance. A consulate can verify a detainee's whereabouts and condition, pass messages to family, press for humane treatment and ask about timelines. It cannot overturn an admissibility decision taken by another sovereign state, and it cannot compel a removal flight to be scheduled.

Hernandez says he is now very weak. She told RTP the detention centre is overcrowded, and that he warned her she might not hear from him for days because he could be placed in isolation.

Why this matters beyond one family

The Azores have one of the densest emigration links to North America of any European region, and traffic between Terceira and the American east and west coasts is constant family movement rather than tourism. Air links keep tightening: in August, United confirmed Terceira's first New York nonstop for June 2027. More direct travel means more border encounters.

The case also lands in a year when several countries have quietly hardened entry rules for Portuguese travellers. In August we reported that Australia paused Work and Holiday visa applications from Portugal with no reopening date. The pattern is the same: a route long treated as routine stops being routine, and the traveller finds out at the counter.

What this means for you

• An expired US residence visa does not reset with an ESTA. The visa-waiver programme is for genuine short visits. Prior residence and an expired status are exactly what secondary inspection looks for.
• Land borders are not softer than airports. The advice that entering from Canada is easier is folklore. Officers at land crossings have the same discretion and more time to use it.
• Devices are searchable at the border. Messages, photos and search history can and do form the basis of an intent finding. This applies to every traveller, not only those with an immigration history.
• Register your trip and know your consulate. Portuguese nationals abroad should keep the relevant consulate's emergency contact to hand. San Francisco covers the western United States.

Freitas de Sousa's removal remains, in the ministry's words, a process under way without a date. For a family in Washington state and relatives on Terceira, that is the whole of what the Portuguese state can currently tell them. Anyone renewing an ESTA on the assumption that a long American life counts in their favour should read this case the other way round: it is the length of that life, and the expired paperwork behind it, that made the difference at the border. It is the same consular arithmetic seen in May, when Lisbon summoned an ambassador over two detained Portuguese doctors: Portugal can make noise, and then it waits.