"The government's proposal to extinguish the Border and Immigration Service will be put on the agenda of the 9 July plenary session of the Assembly of the Republic, which will lead the Border and Immigration Investigation Career Union to announce a new strike and a demonstration outside Parliament on 9 July," the union said in a statement sent to Lusa.

The SCIF/SEF union states that the strike has been decreed in all workplaces, so that between 00:00 and 24:00 on Friday, "all service activity will be suspended," with only minimum services being maintained.

The proposed law of the Government that defines the transfer of police powers of the Foreigners and Borders Service to the PSP, GNR and Judiciary Police, changes made in the restructuring of SEF, will be discussed on Friday in parliament.

The union considers that the proposal the Government will take to Parliament "to extinguish the SEF divides critical information into parts, politicises access to data, militarises and criminalises immigration even more", calling on opposition parties "not to let one of the worst laws ever presented pass".

For the union, the Government "by distributing SEF's duties among more than one police force, divides information that is critical for the security of the country and of the European Union into parts", as well as dividing them up among six entities, "some of which have yet to be created".

The most representative trade union of the SEF inspectors also stresses that the proposal "also politicises access to data that will be managed by administrative entities and, contrary to what is stated in the explanatory memorandum, reinforces the criminal approach to immigration, which will also have to deal with the military of the GNR".

"At a moment so relevant for the security of the European Union, to be dispersing data through different systems and still cross-referencing it with administrative entities is a recipe for disaster. All European countries will look at Portugal with suspicion", said the President of SCIF/SEF.

Acácio Pereira considered that this is "a badly made proposal, with incompetent wording and revealing a profound ignorance of what internal security is, which does not clarify the distribution of duties, not even from the territorial point of view".

The union has already sent a request for an audience to the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, to express its concerns about the Government's intention to extinguish the SEF, a service with 35 years of existence.

The draft law aims to reformulate the security forces and services that, under the law, exercise the activity of internal security, amending the Internal Security Law, the Criminal Investigation Organisation Law and the organic laws of the GNR and PSP.

With these changes, the police functions of the SEF, namely border control and criminal investigation of crimes such as trafficking in human beings and aiding illegal immigration, will be transferred to the GNR, PSP and PJ, as criminal police bodies.