“We are studying that in Portugal, because we have a very large movement traditionally in relation to the Portuguese community,” he told Lusa in Legrena, Greece, where he took part in a ceremony to mark the 10th anniversary of the European Public Law Organization, which Portugal joined this year. “For now I wouldn’t want to take a position.”

A significant number of young Portuguese citizens, who could be in the hundreds, are at risk of being deported after the US president, Donald Trump, decided to end his predecessor’s ‘Dreamers’ programme, which protected people who had entered the US illegally as children.

US officials have not released estimates by nationality of those who have benefited from the ‘Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals' (DACA) programme, but organisations that work with Portuguese immigrants in hotspots such as Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and California stress that the initiative was very popular in communities there.

Earlier, Portugal’s government had said that its diplomats are assessing the implications of the decision, which is set to affect up to 800,000 undocumented youngsters.

In comments to Lusa, the secretary of state for Portuguese communities abroad, José Luis Carneiro, said that Portugal was “monitoring the situation” and that its ambassador to the US was “trying to understand what are the implications that this law will have and the extent of the announcement that has been made.”

He noted that similar actions were being taken in other countries with large numbers of undocumented immigrants, such as France, and that Switzerland and the UK are among countries with similar situations to the US, with migrants who are registered for social security and tax, for example, but lack residency rights.