# AIMA Court Backlog Task Force Resumes for Second Round in September

> Portugal's 28-judge task force resumes work this September, having cleared 22,436 AIMA lawsuits from a backlog immigrants had to sue over.

- Source: https://www.growinportugal.com/news/aima-s-court-ordered-backlog-task-force-restarts-for-a-secon-2026-09-19
- Publisher: GrowIN Portugal (https://www.growinportugal.com)
- Published: 2026-09-19
- Last reviewed: 2026-09-19
- Language: en

> **Key figures — as of 2026-09-19:** 28-judge task force created by the Superior Council of Administrative and Tax Courts (CSTAF) cleared **22,436 AIMA lawsuits** (roughly 18–20% of the backlog) between April and June 2026 — backlog stood at **124,000 cases** when the panel began; task force paused for judicial summer recess and resumes in **September 2026** for the second half of its six-month mandate; a separate bill to spread AIMA cases beyond Lisbon's courts was debated in Parliament on **16 September 2026**.

## A Fifth Down, Four-Fifths to Go

Twenty-eight judges, working AIMA cases on top of their regular caseload, handed down rulings on 22,436 cases over a three-month period, according to figures the Superior Council of Administrative and Tax Courts confirmed to Diário de Notícias. That represents the clearance of approximately one-fifth of the total backlog, which stood at 124,000 cases when the special group began its work in April. The panel's output built steadily: after 5,691 rulings were handed down in April, May saw a peak of 8,705 decisions, and high productivity was maintained in June, with 8,040 cases concluded. Beyond final rulings, the group also processed over 47,000 procedural actions, including requests for documentation and information-gathering steps.

Every one of those files represents someone who had to go to court just to get AIMA to schedule a residency appointment or decide a pending application — a symptom of an agency that inherited a mountain of cases when it replaced SEF in October 2023.

## Why the Courtroom Became the Front Door

Most of these cases follow the same pattern: an applicant's residence permit, family reunification or CPLP file sat past the statutory 90-day decision window, so a lawyer files an *intimação para a prática de acto devido* — a court order compelling AIMA to act. Courts have leaned toward granting these because the procedural breach is usually clear-cut. The pressure runs both ways: back in May, the president of the Supreme Administrative Court described AIMA as being in "total panic" after the surge of rulings hit the agency faster than it could process them, warning that dozens more judges — not just 28 — would be needed to clear the underlying court backlog by the government's own 2029 target.

Not every pending file necessarily needs a courtroom fight, either. Judges coordinating the effort have flagged that a chunk of the queue may already be resolved on paper — a meaningful share of pending lawsuits may already be moot in practice, because AIMA resolved the underlying case administratively without telling the court, with one appellate judge estimating that as many as 80,000 of the pending files could already be settled outside the courtroom, simply awaiting paperwork to close them formally. Anyone with a case sitting in the queue should ask their lawyer to check the court registry before assuming they need to keep litigating.

## The September Restart

The task force didn't run continuously through the summer. The task force pauses for the judicial summer recess and resumes in September for the second half of its six-month mandate. That puts the panel's full run at roughly April through late September or October — after which it's an open question whether CSTAF renews or expands it, especially with the 2029 clearance target the Supreme Administrative Court's president has cited as unrealistic at the current staffing level.

**GrowIN's read on the maths:** at the April–June clearance rate — 22,436 rulings issued over a 91-day stretch, or roughly 247 per day — working through the roughly 101,564 cases still left in that original 124,000-case pile would take about 411 more days at the same pace, or **close to 14 months** of continuous output. That's before accounting for the weeks lost to summer recess, or for the hundreds of new lawsuits arriving daily that keep replenishing the queue. In practice, the second round starting this September is unlikely to finish the job — it will chip away at it.

*"For thousands of foreigners, the courtroom has become the only reliably functioning front door to residency in Portugal,"* says GrowIN Portugal Editorial.

## A Parallel Fix: Spreading the Load Beyond Lisbon

The judicial task force is only half the government's response. On 16 September, Parliament debated draft law 98/XVII, which would end Lisbon's monopoly on AIMA litigation. The cases would instead be distributed according to the home address or registered office of the person or organisation taking legal action, rather than funnelling everything to the Lisbon Administrative Court because that's where AIMA is headquartered. Notably, the Government does not plan to create separate immigration courts — instead, specialised sections would be set up within courts that already exist. A near-identical bill was rejected in February 2026 over fears it would simply spread the backlog nationwide rather than solve it, so implementation timing remains uncertain.

## What This Means If You're Waiting

If you already have a lawsuit pending against AIMA, the September restart is genuinely relevant news, but it's not a guarantee of a quick resolution — outcomes still depend on your court, your case type and where it sits in the queue. Ask your lawyer to check whether AIMA has quietly resolved your file already before spending more on litigation. If you haven't filed yet and are stuck waiting on an appointment, review the current process on our [visas](/visas/) hub before deciding whether to sue or wait it out — and remember the one-year deadline to bring a court action runs from the date AIMA's own legal decision deadline lapsed.

The backlog isn't disappearing this year. It's just moving, slowly, one ruling at a time.

## Sources

- [The Portugal News](https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2026-07-20/task-force-clears-nearly-20-of-aima-case-backlog-in-three-months/1058037)
- [The Portugal News](https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/2026-09-17/aima-court-cases-to-be-handled-across-portugal/1087426)
- [GrowIN Portugal](https://www.growinportugal.com/news/judicial-task-force-clears-one-fifth-of-aima-lawsuit-backlog-2026-07-21)
- [GrowIN Portugal](https://www.growinportugal.com/news/government-moves-to-shift-aima-lawsuits-to-regional-courts-2026-08-20)

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© GrowIN Portugal. Cite as: GrowIN Portugal, "AIMA Court Backlog Task Force Resumes for Second Round in September", https://www.growinportugal.com/news/aima-s-court-ordered-backlog-task-force-restarts-for-a-secon-2026-09-19