A “deportation war” being waged by Sweden is “tearing British families apart”, said The Telegraph.
Criticism is mounting over the country’s contentious approach to Britons who chose to make Sweden their home before Brexit.
Why are British people being deported?
The problem has been “rumbling” since Brexit, said the broadsheet. When the UK left the European Union in 2020, British citizens stopped being EU citizens, which meant they no longer had automatic right of residence status in Sweden.
A transitional period, when British citizens could apply for residence status under the withdrawal agreement between the UK and the EU, ended on 31 December 2021.
By 2024, there were 14,233 applications for post-Brexit residency, including from family members joining British citizens after the deadline. Just under 4,000 were rejected, a refusal rate three times higher than any other EU state and considerably higher than the bloc’s average of between 3% and 4%, according to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
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According to data from the European Commission, between 2021 and 2025, 2,490 UK nationals were ordered to leave Sweden – almost a third of the total of more than 7,500 UK nationals ordered to leave the 27 EU Member States during that period. The Migrationsverket, the Swedish government agency, said that 458 British citizens have been deported or forcibly removed since Brexit.
Who has been deported?
The rejections include some “disturbing cases of vulnerable Britons” who were told to leave either because they missed the application deadline or, in other cases, where the deadline was met, but other necessary documentation or conditions were ruled missing or unmet.
Some Britons have been “told to go” after living in the country for more than 25 years, and even “vulnerable elderly people with dementia” have been affected, said The Guardian. One 34-year-old man was deported even though he had been in Sweden since he was 10 years old. This separated him from his wife in Gothenburg, who said Brexit had “crushed families”.
A 78-year-old British widow, Joyce Thomas, had been told to remove herself from Sweden before 9 September. “I don’t take anything from this country,” she told the newspaper. “I am self-sufficient, I put money in this country, have no criminal record.” She has since won a temporary reprieve pending an appeal by her lawyer, but “her plight remains the same with the threat of a deportation merely in abeyance”, said The Guardian.
Horace Mason, 74, who has lived in Sweden for 25 years, has dementia and receives full-time care, but he’s “been given 10 days to leave” after losing a post-Brexit migration court case, said The Telegraph. According to reports, he applied in time, but Swedish authorities say he did not supply documentation confirming he met requirements to stay.
Nigel Davies, 64, had lived in Sweden for 17 years before he was taken to a deportation centre last July and driven to the airport at 4am. He wasn’t allowed to tell his teenage children what was happening, even though they were alone because his wife had died from cancer. His “only crime” was that his application to remain in Sweden was six days late.
What’s behind this?
A broader political backdrop is at play: Sweden’s current government has adopted a significantly tougher immigration policy, after Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister, said: “improving re-migration is high on my government’s agenda”.
The Sweden Democrats, a far-right party that’s “outside the government but backs it in parliament”, is exerting more influence on the scene, said Reuters. Once the country was known for its welcome to migrants, but there’s now an “insularity and “anti-British feeling”, Davies told The Telegraph.
A Foreign Office spokesperson told The Telegraph that the government “regularly raise concerns regarding Sweden’s protection of citizens’ rights” with Swedish authorities and the European Commission.
Meanwhile, the “young, the old, vulnerable people, the wealthy” will continue to be the “target of harsh and often aggressive immigration policies”, said Swedish journalist Martin Gelin in The Guardian, and, although the country goes to the polls this weekend, “it will take more than one election to get the old, tolerant Sweden back”.
