British nationalist Mark Collett, leader of the organization Patriotic Alternative, was detained by Swedish border police immediately upon arrival at Arlanda Airport near Stockholm on Friday – and subsequently deported.

He was an invited speaker at a summer festival organized by the nationalist association Det fria Sverige (Free Sweden) in Töreboda, central Sweden, but was stopped with the justification that he “poses a threat to public order, society’s structure and the values on which Sweden and Europe are built”.

According to Collett’s own account, he was held at the airport for over 25 hours, without access to luggage or passport, despite not being suspected of any crime.

“After being stranded for more than 25 hours at the airport, two police officers finally came and said it was time to leave. They escorted me to a gate and made sure I boarded a direct flight home”, he writes on Telegram.

He further notes that no EU country would dream of treating an illegal immigrant the way Swedish border police treated him – despite him entering the country completely legally.

The deportation is based on utlänningslagen (Chapter 8, sections 11-12), which gives authorities the right to deny entry to foreigners deemed to pose “a genuine, actual and sufficiently serious threat to a fundamental societal interest”. What this means in practice is very unclear and leaves extensive and arbitrary room for interpretation. Critics argue that the law is used to prevent regime critics and dissidents from entering the country, based on their opinions rather than actual criminality.

Ideologically driven border control

Collett has been a well-known figure in British nationalism for decades, with a clearly immigration-critical and ethno-nationalist agenda. However, it remains unclear how his views that non-European mass immigration is destructive and negative would constitute a threat to Swedish interests. According to critics, the case rather demonstrates ideologically driven border control, where political positions – not actions – determine who is allowed to enter.

There is no criminal investigation or inquiry against Collett, and no information suggests he was planning anything illegal. Yet his mere presence was deemed incompatible with Swedish values – an assessment that was apparently sufficient to detain him and carry out a deportation.

Instead of scrutinizing the border police’s legally questionable actions against regime critics, several Swedish establishment media outlets have seized the opportunity to attack Collett – who is described as, among other things, a dangerous “Nazi”, “white power leader” and “far-right extremist”.