Denmark refused to keep coddling foreign criminals when Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced on January 30, 2026, that her government will start to deport non-Danish citizens sentenced to at least one year in prison for grave offenses.
The policy singles out serious crimes such as aggravated assault, rape, and similar violent felonies. Frederiksen stated plainly at a press conference in Copenhagen, "Foreigners who commit serious crimes must, as a very clear starting point, be deported."
Right now, expulsions happen in only about 70% of cases where foreign nationals get a year or more, according to the immigration ministry.
The reform closes that loophole and sets deportation as the standard outcome. There will be no more housing and feeding these foreigners, but sending them back where they came from.