Sweden's Deportation Demands Triple Under New Crime Law

STOCKHOLM - The number of foreign nationals charged with crimes who now face being deported from Sweden has exploded since a tougher law took effect on September 1. In the law's first month, prosecutors' deportation demands in Sweden's three biggest cities rose by a combined 242 percent compared with the same month last year.

In Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö, the number of defendants facing a prosecution demand for deportation more than tripled in September, according to a review by the daily Dagens Nyheter.

The biggest jump was at Stockholm's four prosecution offices, where deportation demands quadrupled. In Malmö they rose by 278 percent, from nine people in September last year to 34 this year. Gothenburg also saw a clear increase once the new rules kicked in after the summer.

Sweden Democrat Policy

Behind the surge is a legal change pushed through by the centre-right government and its partner the Sweden Democrats. Tougher criminal deportations are a core part of the Tidö Agreement, the 2022 deal that brought the government to power, and the Sweden Democrats have campaigned for years for foreign criminals to be expelled far more often.

Under new guidance from the Swedish Prosecution Authority, prosecutors are now obliged to request deportation whenever a foreign national is charged with a crime that can carry more than a fine.

Previously the main rule was that the crime had to merit at least six months in prison, or there had to be a concrete risk of reoffending. It was also up to each prosecutor to weigh the person's ties to Sweden.

"We have been completely stripped of that right since September 1. We are not to weigh the crime's penal value against how long the person has been here," senior prosecutor Liselott Herschend, who wrote the authority's guidance, told DN.

The special protection for people who arrived in Sweden before turning 15 has also been scrapped. Re-entry bans have been lengthened, and courts no longer consider possible obstacles to carrying out a deportation - that is instead examined by the Swedish Migration Agency once the sentence has been served.

Prosecutors Push Back

Not everyone in the justice system is happy. Critics object to prosecutors being forced to seek deportation even for less serious crimes, and Herschend expects courts to reject a large share of the new demands. "We will be making a lot of deportation demands that will not be granted," she told DN.

Malmö District Court, among others, has warned that simple criminal trials will take longer when statements have to be obtained from the Migration Agency, and that fewer suspects will confess for fear of being deported.

"Provocatively Few"

Migration Minister Johan Forssell of the Moderates welcomed the rise, saying the old system let far too few foreign offenders leave the country. "The whole background to this is the victims' perspective. The evaluations we have seen of how it worked before show a provocatively small number of verdicts actually led to deportation," he said.

The government's inquiry expects the tougher law to produce around 5,000 more deportation demands a year, compared with just over 1,000 in 2024. Actual criminal deportations are projected to rise by about 2,500 a year to roughly 3,000 - six times as many as before the reform.