In total, 24 minors were detained in airports in Portugal in 2024. Teenagers, mainly from Portuguese -speaking countries, arriving in the company of smuggler and with false documents, were sent to illegal adoption, false football academies or forced to begged.
Children from Angola for sale
The first case: March 11, 2025. After a seven-hour flight from Luanda, a 40-year-old woman of Portuguese-Angolian origin and 15-year-old Angolczyk are preparing to cross the border at the Portela airport in Lisbon. The teenager has with him a Portuguese uniform travel document (issued in the procedure of urgent Portugal citizens who will be abroad without documents), who after entering the country will allow him to obtain Portuguese documents and the right to free movement within the Schengen zone.
The boy's identity raises doubts of public security police officers. A national anti -terrorist unit of the court police is called – Angolczyk's journey, which was to land in France, ends at the Lisbon airport.
“From what we understand, this one The citizen placed dozens of Angolian children in Europe with false documents and used this road at least from 2020. She did it even during a pandemic. She earned on it. She received 4,000 hole. (3.7 thousand euros) for a child, “is given in an official announcement of the court police.
The smuggler was only one of the cells in the chain – she was responsible for the transport of victims, like “mules”, people transporting drugs from the place of origin to the destination.
“Children often go to families with the same citizenship as they – they adopt them or accept them in order to obtain state aid, which can reach EUR 1.5 thousand per month per person. When the number of children increases from three to four, the money is much higher. That is why people buy children from traders,” we read in the same source.
The second case: March 22, 2025. 48-year-old Angolczyk arrives through Istanbul to the Sá Carneiro airport in Porto with a six-year-old girl from Luanda. He says it's his daughter. Police officers gain doubts about the relationship between them, as well as about the girl's age and the authenticity of her passport.
Romanian children sold for 100 euros
In 2016-2020, the Public Security Police (PSP) identified around Thirty children who fell victim to smuggling from Romania to Portugal. As reported by the “Sábado” daily, minors were used to begging near hospitals and tourist attractions in the largest cities of Portugal – one of such places was Ludwik's bridge and in Porto. The implementation of this plan in just four years brought criminal organizations half a million euros, which translates into almost EUR 500 per child per day.
Commissioner PSP João Soeima told the newspaper “Sábado” that many of the abducted juvenile “emigrated”, but some others and associated with criminal cells.
“Some of the children who are now adult, emigrated and continued to live in other European countries,” explains João Soeima. “Others returned to their families, and others have somehow related to the organizations that traded them. protection “. Soeima reports that when they were disconnected from the family, the children had only “from 13 to 15 years” and they were “almost only girls”.
Criminal organizations recruited children in various ways: some families received about 100 euros in exchange for their underage members. In other cases, marriages with one of the gang members were promised. Some families were simply forced to give their children.
In Portugal, young people were persuaded to be begging, e.g. as deaf river. The teenagers forced money, indicating a card suspended on their neck with information that they are collecting a “certificate from the Regional Association of Deaf Disabled.” According to Soeima, these situations took place in Lisbon, Porto and Coimbra.
Instead of a career in football – slavery
Recently, another way to trade in children has been discovered in Portugal. False recruiters were multiplied, cheating migrants dreaming of a football career. Young men from Africa or Latin America come in the hope of success in football – meanwhile they end up in misery. As many as 256 victims of this fraud were identified throughout the country within five years.
In 2023, the immigration authorities, as part of the operation called “El Dorado”, released 47 young people from Africa, Asia and South America, who were cheated and were detained at the Bsports Academy in the north of the country.
“The real interest of the millionaire” – this is how the daily “Correio da Manhã” was then described by a broken gang trading in young footballers, thanks to which Mário Costa, a well -known figure of Portuguese football, was enriched. According to the newspaper, “about 100 boys brought EUR 150,000 to Bsports a month”, a false academy founded by Costa. Among the 47 saved young people, as many as 36 were underage.
As the Portuguese media notice, finding many children who reach their destination is almost impossible. Citizenship often changes.
