New officers will be deployed to national airports to beef up border control response
After announcing an early reinforcement of border police at Faro Airport, Portugal’s PSP police force has confirmed it will deploy 500 new officers to boost border control and airport security at Lisbon, Porto, Madeira and the Azores in July to tackle long queues caused by a new border control system.
The 500 recruits currently in training are expected to be fully operational by July, PSP police announced.
However, the nightmarish queues at Faro Airport led PSP police to reinforce its border police ranks in the Algarve earlier than the rest of the country. Speaking to Lusa news agency, a PSP source said 14 to 20 officers from other parts of the country have already been redirected to Faro to ease pressure and “immediately respond to operational needs”.
Last week, new border control systems were installed at Portuguese airports, causing thousands of passengers from countries outside the Schengen Area to wait several hours for immigration control.
