SSU Chair to Be Deported: “Then We'll Hide Her”

She came to Sweden and Köping at the age of ten and has lived here with her uncle’s family. For the past three years, 21-year-old Afnan Agha has been chair of SSU in western Mälardalen. In 2021, she was granted a temporary residence permit due to “particularly distressing circumstances”—a reason for assessment that was abolished two years later, and last year she received a deportation order.

The assessment basis of particularly distressing circumstances was abolished by the Tidö government with the support of the Social Democrats, yet it is for the Social Democrats that she is now campaigning with full force.

In October, the deportation order came from the Swedish Migration Agency, and as an adult, Afnan Agha is considered able to manage in Iraq.

– Then we’ll hide her, says Annika Duàn (S), chair of the municipal council, to DN.

On Facebook, the Social Democrats in Köping have tried to raise awareness of the case, but no party colleagues at the national level seem interested. Duàn believes that the Social Democrats should use Afnan’s case in the election campaign.

Together with Elizabeth Salomonsson, who ran Köping as chair of the municipal board for 35 years until she stepped down in 2020, they no longer recognize their party.

– It has gone too far, become too strict and inhumane, says Elizabeth Salomonsson.

They both feel that a strict migration policy sounds too negative.

Afnan is also disappointed.

– I have been a bit disappointed, in some way. That you feel you stand for a party, for an ideology and for values that you display and campaign for – but you get nothing in return for it.

Used People Smugglers

She came to Sweden in 2015 illegally with the help of expensive human smugglers across the Mediterranean. In the Migration Agency’s deportation decision, it states that she is “assessed to have a strong connection to Iraq” as “you grew up in an Iraqi context with your uncle and his family in Sweden.”

In connection with the decision, she had four weeks to leave Sweden, but with the help of her legal representative, she supplemented her application with new grounds for protection. After this, the Migration Court sent the case back to the Migration Agency, which will now make a new decision.

A source within the Social Democrats speaks anonymously in order not to risk losing their job.

– The reason that almost no Social Democrats like or share this [Facebook post] is because no one knows what is considered right or wrong in the party anymore. Morality has been lost.