Kafka in Porto: The Legal Worker Imprisoned for Being a Migrant

In a quiet industrial zone near Porto, Singh has spent the past two and a half years doing what many consider the mark of a model immigrant: working hard, paying taxes, staying out of trouble. He has a full-time contract with a Portuguese company. Every month, his employer contributes to social security on his behalf. He’s never broken the law. Yet, Singh is currently being held behind locked doors in a facility that bears all the traits of a prison, stripped of freedom not because he committed a crime—but because of an administrative failure.

His story has ignited outrage across Portuguese social networks, prompting hard questions about the state’s treatment of foreign workers, and what kind of country Portugal is becoming.

The Crime of Existence

Singh’s ordeal is the stuff of bureaucratic nightmares. After filing for residency over two years ago with AIMA—the agency overseeing migration affairs—he waited patiently. He worked legally. He paid into the system. But when the decision finally came earlier this year, his application was denied, citing a Schengen alert. No crime was involved. There were no pending legal charges. The authorities failed to consult the issuing country to verify the alert, despite being required to do so under EU law.

Instead of allowing Singh to appeal or regularize his status, the state opted for detention.

“It feels like fiction, a Kafkaesque process that should shame us all.”

Held in the Unidade Habitacional de Santo António—a so-called “installation centre” managed by the PSP (Public Security Police)—Singh has effectively been imprisoned without conviction. No charges have been brought. His only offense appears to be his foreign status in a system increasingly hostile to those who don’t fit cleanly into its categories.

A System That Criminalises Legality

The facility where Singh is held is part of Portugal’s quiet but growing network of immigrant detention centres. Officially described as transitional or procedural spaces, they function like carceral zones: beds, guards, strip searches, limited access to outside communication. Requests for legal visits were redirected to unanswered emails. Singh’s phone was confiscated. Even an interpreter, assigned by the state, couldn’t communicate in Punjabi—his native language.

In a striking legal contradiction, the judge overseeing the case cited “risk of escape” as justification for preventive detention—despite Singh's steady employment, permanent address, and regular contributions to social security. Worse, his employer is now being investigated for allegedly hiring an “irregular migrant”—even though the contract and contributions were fully documented. If guilt is to be found, it lies not with Singh or his boss, but with the dysfunctional system that rendered him invisible, and now blames others for recognizing his humanity.

Institutional Failure by Design

What this case reveals is more than a clerical error. It exposes a systemic contradiction: Portugal, like many EU countries, depends on foreign labour for construction, cleaning, care, and hospitality. Yet, it treats these same workers as disposable and criminally suspect—especially if they come from the Global South.

The government has spent years promising a humane, rights-based approach to migration. Yet the infrastructure tells a different story: delays in residency processing that stretch into years, an opaque database of Schengen alerts with no clear redress, and detention centres that effectively function as prisons without trials.

In Singh’s case, the Portuguese state is doing something unprecedentedly cruel: retroactively punishing a man for playing by the rules. For believing in the promise of paperwork. For trying to do things “the right way.”

What Kind of Country Do We Want to Be?

This is not just a case of mistaken identity or bureaucratic delay. It’s a test of national conscience.

Portugal has often held up its image as a welcoming nation, proud of its openness and historical connections to the wider world. Has it become a crime to be a foreign worker? And more crucially: Is this who we want to be as a country?

The silence from official channels is deafening. So far, there’s been no apology, no swift resolution, no public inquiry. Singh remains detained. His future uncertain. His dignity, quietly eroded.

And with him, something else is being detained: the idea that justice, in Portugal, is blind to race, class, and passport colour.