Demonstrators hold a banner reading, “Don’t Push Us Against the Wall,” at a march protesting police treatment of immigrants, in Lisbon, Portugal, Jan. 11, 2025.

Raihan remembers the day in late December when a large police contingent arrived at Rua Benformoso, a street near Martim Moniz square in downtown Lisbon. The area is known for housing immigrant workers, with large diaspora communities from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nepal and China who run restaurants, shops and other businesses.

Raihan, a 39-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant who has been living in the Portuguese capital for three years, works in one such shop that sells clothing and house supplies while also doubling as a travel agency. He was there on the afternoon of Dec. 19, when security agents belonging to Portugal’s Public Security Police, or PSP, blocked both sides of Rua Benformoso.

“Some of the policemen had their faces covered,” Raihan recalls. “We had never seen an operation like this one.”

That day, dozens of people were stopped for nearly two hours and made to stand with their hands against the wall, while police officers checked their identification papers and patted them down looking for weapons and drugs. Residents, business owners and passersby all had to comply.

“People here felt humiliated for being treated as criminals,” Raihan told WPR. Images of the operation later surfaced, showing a long line of people, mainly Asian immigrants, waiting to be searched under the watchful eye of the police.

For weeks afterward, the operation was the subject of debate and discussion among political parties and across Portuguese society. Authorities have defended the action, stating that over 50 knife attacks have taken place in the area over the past two years. Crimes linked to drug trafficking have also reportedly increased.

But for such a spectacular operation targeting dozens of legal immigrants, the results were meager. Police recovered €4,000 in cash, less than 600 grams of hashish, a knife and documents suspected of being linked to illegal immigration. Two Portuguese nationals were arrested.

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The police operation at Rua Benformoso is not the first to target specific areas of the country that have seen a rise in criminality. And the operation was reportedly compliant with Portuguese law. 

Yet, while no incidents of police violence were reported, the images of mostly Asian immigrants lined up against a wall cannot be disconnected from the current political environment in Portugal. Authorities seem to think that actions like the December operation at Rua Benformoso can be an effective response to growing perceptions of insecurity in Portuguese society. But the idea that Portugal has become a significantly more dangerous country doesn’t survive scrutiny of the numbers.

With regard to crime, preliminary figures show that in 2024, overall criminality stagnated, while violent crime increased only slightly, between 1 percent and 2 percent. And the annual number of homicides, which amounted to 124 last year, is less than half of what it was in the 1990s. Of those 124 homicides, only eight of them were committed by someone with no link to the victim. To be sure, domestic violence remains a serious problem, as do violent disputes between neighbors. But generally speaking, Portugal remains one of the safest countries in the world, ranking 7th in the 2024 Global Peace Index.

In other words, the idea that the country has become meaningfully more dangerous, and that this has been worsened by an influx of migrants, is laughable. 

But you wouldn’t know this from listening to Andre Ventura, leader of the far-right populist and anti-immigrant Chega party, who makes Portugal seem like a hellscape of violent crime. And that message is helping the party gain traction: In the country’s March 2024 parliamentary elections, Chega secured 50 seats in Portugal’s 230-member national assembly, making it the third-largest party in parliament.

As a result of Chega’s constant fearmongering, the party’s unsubstantiated ideas about the impact of immigrants in Portugal are gaining ground.

As Chega’s support grows, its misleading message about security in Portugal continues to be amplified. Following a formula that has proven successful populist movements across Europe, Chega often links the increase in immigration to a rise in criminality in Portugal.

It’s true that the number of legal immigrants residing in Portugal has risen exponentially in the past decade, from nearly 400,000 in 2015 to just over 1 million in 2023. Today, immigrants account for 10 percent of the population, below the European Union average of 15 percent. Hundreds of thousands more have applied for residency in what is currently a backlogged process.

Now, however, as a result of Chega’s constant fearmongering and its populist rhetoric scapegoating immigrants and other communities, the party’s unsubstantiated ideas about the impact of immigrants in Portugal are gaining ground.

A recent survey found that 19 percent of Portuguese now believe that the higher number of immigrants has increased insecurity, even though this is not supported by the statistics. As much as 48 percent of those surveyed thought that immigrants make up 20 percent of the population, double their actual proportion. Additionally, the same survey found that 52 percent of people believe that immigrants’ social security benefits largely outweigh their contributions. In reality, their contributions represented a net surplus of €2.3 billion in 2023, and Portugal’s social security system would likely be in the red without them.

That Chega would paint an erroneous picture of immigration’s impact on security to serve its political agenda is to be expected. But the way that Portuguese authorities react to these misleading portrayals also has an impact on public perceptions. And that was on display in the aftermath of Dec. 19.

Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro, head of the center-right Social Democrat Party, or PSD, defended the security operation on Rua Benformoso. Following the police raid, at a press conference in Brussels, Montenegro stated that these types of operations are important to ensure police “visibility and proximity.”

That seemed to imply that in order to counter inaccurate perceptions of insecurity, it was legitimate for the state to specifically target legal immigrant communities with intrusive checks.

Ten days later, however, when the images of the raid on Rua Benformoso had circulated more widely, Montenegro softened his tone, claiming that he had not liked what he saw and that the operation was out of the ordinary. However, he also stated that the police had no other choice but to conduct the operation in the way they did.

Like many other leaders of European center-right parties, Montenegro seems to be playing a double game. On one hand, he aims to limit Chega’s political space, stating repeatedly before the elections in March 2024 that his PSD would not include the far-right party in a coalition government. 

On the other, he has simultaneously adopted Chega’s line on security in an effort to assuage public concerns. Indeed, Montenegro’s initial reaction to the police operation on Rua Benformoso, which he has stated was not specifically ordered by the government, seemed to be an attempt to justify a more robust approach to security operations in general.

Meanwhile, Chega’s inflammatory exploitation of any high-profile criminal cases involving immigrants underscores what the party would likely do were it ever to enter a coalition government in the future.

For instance, were a Chega appointee to control the Interior Ministry—something Ventura has made clear he would seek in any potential governing coalition—operations targeting immigrant neighborhoods like the one that took place in Rua Benformoso would likely become the norm.

How Montenegro’s center-right government reacts to Chega’s populist ambitions can either dampen the appeal of its populist messaging or help the party grow. As a result, the authorities should be careful to base their policymaking and communication on facts, even if it runs counter to unsubstantiated public perceptions. Chega has chosen fear as its main political product. But in helping to sell it, the current Portuguese government it is making a big mistake.

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