Police forcibly deported fewer people in January this year than last

The police at work.The police at work.Photo: Gorm Kallestad / NTB scanpix

The Police Immigration Service (PU) deportation department cleared 429 people in January 2017.

That is 180 fewer people than in January last year.On average, 14 people were sent out of Norway on an involuntary basis every day in January, which led to a total of 429 people. In January last year, 609 people were deported.

It represents a decrease of 29% from January last year, to January this year.

The police explained the decreasing numbers were due to many asylum seekers having come to Norway in autumn 2015.

‘In January 2016, we therefore conducted several ‘Dublin rebounds’, of which number, three quarters of the asylum seekers were returned to Germany, Italy and Greece’, said PU.

Of the 159 foreigners convicted of crime who were deported in January this year, one in five were Romanian citizens , 11% were Polish, and 9% were Lithuanian.

Most (54 persons) were deported to Sweden, followed by Italy (42), and Afghanistan (34), Romania (33) and Poland (33).

Altogether, 17 of those deported were minors, but 14 of those people were deported together with their family.

The other three deported minors were sent to another European country, following the Dublin Agreement, which states that the application for asylum should be treated by the country the asylum seeker first arrives at.

Overall last year, 8078 people were deported from Norway. 2268 of these were sanctioned. It is the Police Immigration Service that has responsibility for the deportation of persons who don’t have legal residence in Norway.

The Directorate of Immigration (UDI) is responsible for assisted returns, formerly called voluntary returns, which are not included in these figures.

 

Source: NTB scanpix / Norway Today