What happened
Twins Aliya and Najib were deported during the night leading into Wednesday on a flight to Somalia's capital Mogadishu. The deportation was carried out with the help of EU border guards. All parties in the Riksdag agree that the so-called teenage deportations should be stopped. The Swedish Migration Agency carried out the deportation nonetheless while awaiting a formal decision.
Our analysis
When politicians want to project decisiveness against new Swedes, decisions are made in a matter of days. When all eight parties in the Riksdag claim they want to save young people from being uprooted and deported, the same system suddenly pauses behind technicalities. A plane to Mogadishu takes off in the middle of the night, because bureaucracy can never wait for humanity.
Politicians in the Riksdag can now wash their hands and claim there was not enough time to change the law. It is a convenient hypocrisy. They score cheap points by sounding sympathetic in interviews, while deportation numbers tick upwards and satisfy anti-immigration demands.
The price of this political game is not paid by ministers or directors-general. It is paid by young Swedish-Somali siblings who are sent straight into an uncertain future in a country they might barely remember. As long as words in the Riksdag do not stop the planes in practice, the agreement is worth nothing.
Explained
Teenage deportations is the term used when young people who grew up in Sweden are deported when they turn 18, as they are then assessed as adults without their own asylum status even though their entire lives are here.