Voluntary Return Programme Sends 1,086 Irregular Migrants Home Since UNEF Standup in August 2025 — Brazilian Nationals Dominate the OIM and Frontex Files
PSP's UNEF logged 1,086 voluntary departures of irregular migrants between August 2025 and end-April 2026 — 665 in 2025 and 421 across the first four months of 2026. Frontex carried 561 cases, OIM 525. Brazilians dominate the cohort.
The Polícia de Segurança Pública's Unidade Nacional de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (UNEF) booked 1,086 voluntary departures of irregular migrants between its August 2025 standup and the end of April 2026, according to figures the unit released to reporters and circulated by Observador and Público on Saturday 23 May 2026. The cohort splits 665 in calendar 2025 against 421 in the first four months of 2026 — a pace that would clear the 2025 total inside the second half of this year if it holds.
The Programme by the Numbers
The 1,086-person file routes through two parallel channels. The International Organization for Migration (OIM) assisted 525 departures — 348 last year and 177 already in 2026. The European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) handled 561 — 317 in 2025 and 244 across the first four months of this year. Frontex now outpaces OIM by a thin margin on both annual and year-to-date counts, a reversal of the historical pattern where the OIM programme — older in Portugal and humanitarian-coded — carried the bulk of the file. The UNEF cohort tilts heavily Brazilian: PSP figures hand the majority of the 2025–2026 returnees to Brazilian nationals, the same constituency that has dominated Portugal's irregular-migration enforcement pipeline since the manifestação de interesse regime was wound down in June 2024.
What Voluntary Return Actually Is
The PSP draws a sharp procedural line between voluntary return and expulsion. 'Imigrantes que usufruem do programa de retorno voluntário não são expulsos' — voluntary-return participants leave on their own initiative, with logistical and small-stipend assistance from the assisting agency, and without the administrative-expulsion or judicial-expulsion stamp that bars re-entry to the Schengen area for years. The file is run inside UNEF, the consolidated unit Lisbon stood up in August 2025 to inherit the voluntary-return and forced-removal competencies that had been dispersed across AIMA and the PSP after the October 2023 extinction of the Serviço de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras (SEF).
Where the File Sits in the Wider Enforcement Map
Voluntary return is the soft edge of an enforcement pyramid the Relatório Anual de Segurança Interna (RASI) 2025, released on 31 March 2026, mapped in starker numbers. RASI booked 23,134 notifications to leave voluntarily across 2025, against just 444 in 2024 — a more than fifty-fold jump that reflects the post-manifestação-de-interesse pipeline of irregular files now flowing into the system. Administrative expulsions climbed from 195 to 298 over the same period. The new return regime the Conselho de Ministros approved in March 2026 widens detention windows and trims dilatory appeals — the policy is layered above the UNEF voluntary file and tightens the consequences when the soft edge does not deliver the exit.
What This Means for Expats
Voluntary return is open, not punitive. For irregular migrants weighing options, the OIM and Frontex channels offer assisted departure without an entry ban — the right entry point if the file is closed in Portugal but the country of origin is still safe to return to.
Regular residents are not the audience. If your residency title or its renewal is in process — including the CPLP authorisations, the EU long-term resident card, or a work-visa renewal — the UNEF voluntary-return file does not touch you. The cohort is irregular migrants without a residency claim in progress.
Brazilian nationality cluster. The dominant Brazilian share inside both the OIM and Frontex channels reflects the post-2024 manifestação-de-interesse roll-back. Brazilian families with a regularised member should consult the AIMA family-reunification track rather than read the UNEF file as a precedent.
Where to check status. UNEF's voluntary-return file is run inside the PSP estrangeiros-e-fronteiras desks; the OIM Portugal office and the Frontex assisted-return desk both publish standing eligibility notices. The case file is administrative, not judicial — engagement happens at the police desk, not at the court.
