Key figures — as of 2026-10-03: UNEF (Unidade Nacional de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras) went live 21 August 2025 under Lei n.º 55-C/2025; officer numbers rose from 1,200 at launch toward a 2,000 target during 2026; the unit checked roughly 19.7 million people at air borders in its first year with 428 detentions; 48 Frontex officers began reinforcing Portuguese airports from January 2026, reaching full strength by March; the EU's EES biometric entry-exit system is now running at every Portuguese airport.
A Police Force, Not a Paperwork Office
Portugal now has a dedicated police unit whose entire job is finding, checking and removing foreigners who don't have the right papers — and it's been running for over a year, with its headcount still climbing. A new police unit, the National Foreigners and Borders Unit (UNEF) — also called the "mini SEF" — started operating with 1,200 officers responsible for border control at airports. That was August 2025. By the start of this year, the government had already signalled it wasn't a temporary arrangement: officials indicated there were 1,300 police officers in the unit, with the prospect of this number increasing to 2,000 during 2026.
The legal basis is Law no. 55-C/2025 of 22 July, which formally established the Unidade Nacional de Estrangeiros e Fronteiras within the Public Security Police (PSP). It replaces nothing from the old SEF structurally, but it does absorb the enforcement half of what SEF used to do before its 2023 dissolution — the half that AIMA, built as an administrative agency, was never equipped to carry out.
Who Does What: AIMA vs UNEF
The split that matters for anyone living here is straightforward once you see it. AIMA still issues residence permits, processes renewals and handles the paperwork side of immigration. UNEF handles the coercive side: stopping people at the border, opening infringement files, and physically carrying out removals. Portugal's old Foreigners and Borders Service was shut down in 2023, and PSP now handles the removal, readmission, and return of people without legal status, a task previously managed by AIMA.
Reinforcements have been arriving steadily. Frontex elements began supporting UNEF at Portuguese airports from January 2026, with the reinforcement reaching the full complement of 48 officers by March. Lisbon airport received 26 Frontex officers, Porto 12, and Faro 10.
The Numbers Behind the Headline
UNEF's first full-year balance sheet, published after its August 2026 anniversary, puts scale on the operation. In its first twelve months the unit checked 19,749,328 people at air borders and made 428 detentions, while deploying 1,504 officers across airport security and border control duties.
Run that through the calendar and the picture sharpens: 19.7 million checks over roughly 365 days works out to just under 54,000 people screened per day at Portuguese airports alone — a volume that only makes sense now that biometric systems, not passport stamps, are doing the heavy lifting. That's GrowIN's own calculation from the published annual figures, and it's the number that explains why overstays are getting caught faster than they used to.
The EES system is the other half of the story. Entry-exit biometrics mean a passport that overstays its permitted window doesn't just go unnoticed until a landlord or employer asks questions — it's flagged automatically the next time that person crosses a Schengen border. Combined with UNEF's in-country inspection powers, the margin for drifting into irregular status without anyone noticing has narrowed considerably.
What It Means If Your Status Lapses
For anyone whose residence permit, visa or D7/D8 renewal has slipped past its deadline, the practical stakes have changed. UNEF's remit covers in-country inspections of foreign nationals' compliance and execution of deportation orders, with a voluntary departure window that typically runs 10–20 days before enforcement escalates to forced removal. That window exists, but it isn't generous, and it isn't a substitute for keeping paperwork current.
GrowIN Portugal Editorial's view: the paperwork lag foreigners used to count on has been replaced by a border system that flags an overstay the moment it happens, not months later.
This doesn't change anything about the underlying rules — AIMA still runs the permit system, and our visas guide covers the actual routes and renewal mechanics. What's changed is enforcement capacity. A unit built, staffed and resourced specifically to find and remove people without valid status is now a fixture, not a pilot project, and it's still growing toward its 2,000-officer target.
What to Watch Next
Three things are worth tracking: whether UNEF hits its 2,000-officer target on schedule, how the inherited backlog of pending removal and return files gets worked down now that it sits with a police unit rather than an administrative agency, and whether the European Pact for Migration and Asylum, due to take effect this year, adds further enforcement obligations on top of what UNEF already runs. None of this changes the basic advice: if your residence status is anywhere near its renewal date, don't wait to find out how the new system handles a lapse.