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| All foreigners sentenced to a year or more in jail will be deported under new laws in Denmark |
| 2026-01-31 |
| [Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Denmark will expel non-Danish citizens who have served prison terms of a year or more for serious crimes, the government announced Friday as it presented new measures to tighten its immigration policy. 'Foreign offenders sentenced to at least one year in prison for serious crimes, such as aggravated assault and rape, should, in principle, be expelled,' the immigration ministry said in a statement. Under current regulations, expulsions are not automatic, as Denmark complies with international conventions protecting the right to private and family life and forbidding inhumane treatment. The Scandinavian country has, together with Britain, recently called on Europe to reform the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which safeguards fundamental freedoms. 'It is right and necessary for European countries to sit around a table and say that we prefer to protect our countries rather than protect offenders,' Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told journalists. 'When international rules were drafted, I don't think anyone imagined that someone would flee the Middle East to come to the best country in the world and start raping girls and women,' she said. 'At the time, it was absolutely not imagined that the victim would become the perpetrator. And I can assure you that, unfortunately, many of them have,' she said. According to statistics from the immigration ministry, around 70 percent of foreign nationals sentenced to prison terms of one year or more for serious crimes have been expelled. In addition, the government - which insisted that 'refugees must be in Denmark on a temporary basis' - plans to boost incentives for voluntary returns and to tighten rules for foreigners in departure centres. Denmark also said Friday it would reopen its embassy in Syria and establish cooperation with Afghanistan. In the departure centres, some foreigners who fail to comply with their reporting requirements will be required to wear electronic ankle tags. Frederiksen told a news conference that the government was acting 'unconventionally' and was amending legislation rather than waiting for court rulings on deportation cases. Immigration and Integration Minister Rasmus Stoklund said 315 foreign criminals from countries outside the European Union had received sentences of more than a year over the last five years but were not expelled. 'Many of us find that hard to understand,' he told the news conference. The announcement comes as the EU - which counts Denmark as a member - has been grappling with integration of foreign nationals and migrants and stiffening its legal arsenal. Last month, the 27-member country bloc began finalising an overhaul of its migration system, including tougher restrictions on accepting asylum claims. Many political parties in Europe, and beyond in the Western world, have expressed growing anger over what they see as an undesired surge of immigration in recent years. But in Denmark, a country with hardline immigrtion laws, asylum applications have fallen by 90 per cent in 10 years, dropping to just 2,333 last year. Numbers had peaked in 2015 with 21,316 requests. In 2018, the government enacted the controversial 'anti-ghetto law', which targets neighbourhoods where large numbers of 'non-Western' immigrants live in concentrated areas. It allows the state to demolish apartment blocks in areas to prevent 'parallel societies' from forming. Formerly, the government referred to these neighbourhoods as 'ghettoes'. The law was updated in 2021 to allow councils to create 'prevention areas' where they can refuse to rent to people from outside Denmark, the EU, the EEA, or Switzerland. If these areas also have high levels of unemployment or crime, authorities are obliged to reduce social housing by 40 per cent, including by selling or demolishing properties, or by terminating the lease of tenants by 2030. In December 2025, the European court of justice (ECJ) said the legislation may be unlawful under the EU’s race equality directive. In a preliminary ruling, the ECJ found the policy could lead to an increased risk of eviction for residents in these neighbourhoods compared with those in areas with similar socioeconomic problems but lower levels of immigration. In 2018, Denmark banned the wearing of face veils in public, joining France and other European countries in outlawing the burqa and the niqab worn by some Muslim women to uphold what some politicians say are secular and democratic values. Under the law, police can instruct women to remove their veils or order them to leave public areas. France was the first European country to introduce a blanket ban on wearing burqas in public in 2011. The list has expanded significantly since, with more than 20 states around the world implementing some form of ban on the burqa and other full-face coverings in public, including Austria, Tunisia, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Switzerland and Belgium. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |