The High Court of Justice of La Rioja has annulled the expulsion order issued against S.E.G. by the Government Delegation in that community and has maintained in force his long-term residence authorization, in force since 2013.
The resolution corrects the criterion of the Contentious Court of Logroño, which in a first decision had endorsed the expulsion by understanding that the criminal conviction of S.E.G. fit into the concept of public order and was decisive to deny his/her permanence in Spain.
The court appreciates roots and lack of current risk
The TSJR emphasizes that S.E.G. has been in Spain for more than 19 years and has accumulated more than 15 years of working life. It also states that he is father of a Spanish national minor and that he lives with her and her mother, both legal residents, without that family cohabitation having been questioned.
The chamber adds that it is not recorded that he has reoffended after the events that led to the conviction. With that scenario, it concludes that it does not pose a real, current and sufficiently serious threat to public order or citizen security.
The court also recalls that, in the case of a long-term resident, expulsion requires a detailed justification and a balanced judgment, since it entails a limitation of fundamental rights and alters their own condition as a citizen in a legal sense.
The expulsion opened in 2024 after an identification on the street
The file was initiated in 2024, when S.E.G. was identified in a street check on the street where he lives in La Rioja. The ruling highlights that this procedure was activated a decade after the criminal conviction and four years after having served the sentence.
The expulsion order was based on a report from the National Police Corps which maintained that the conviction revealed a risk to public order. The State Legal Service defended that thesis by alleging that the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court considers as a cause for expulsion sentences exceeding one year while the records remain valid.
Facing this, the TSJR understands that this criterion is not enough by itself when it affects a person with long-term residence and with consolidated family and labor roots.
Previous conviction of the Lleida Court
The conviction that originated the case was handed down by the Provincial Court of Lleida for the rape of a woman in Les Basses d"Alpicat, in October 2012. The sentence imposed on S.E.G. seven years in prison for sexual assault.
The same resolution also sentenced him to one and a half years in prison and a 1,620 euro fine for obstruction of justice, as well as to the payment of 2,700 euros for breaching the restraining order.
According to the proven facts collected in that sentence, after having been charged, he approached the victim in a shopping center and, after she rejected 2,000 euros to withdraw the complaint, he threatened her with causing her problems through other people.
That long-term permit had been issued to him while he was being investigated for the rape. After the conviction by the Lleida Court he remained on provisional release until the sentence was final and finished serving the sentence in October 2019.
Afterward, he settled in La Rioja, where he resides with his wife and his daughter. The ruling now issued renders the expulsion ineffective and maintains his administrative situation in Spain.