Simon Montgomery moved to Sweden after Brexit, which stripped him of withdrawal agreement residency protections. He applied to stay as the father of an EU citizen — his 16-month-old son holds German citizenship through his mother. Sweden's migration agency rejected the application last December, and the migration court upheld the decision this month, finding that "the state's interest in regulated immigration outweighs your interest in the protection of your private and family life." The rejection hinged on a narrow reading of "actual care." Because Montgomery's son was still breastfeeding and staying overnight with his mother when the application was filed at six months old, the agency concluded there was insufficient evidence of hands-on parenting. By the time the court reviewed the case, Montgomery was caring for the child three days a week under a legally recognised joint custody arrangement brokered through Sweden's municipal family law service, with overnights imminent. The court's reasoning contains a striking contradiction. Sweden markets itself as a society built around children's rights to both parents — a principle embedded in its family law culture. Yet the migration court explicitly weighed immigration control above the child's attachment needs during what Montgomery's lawyer called "a critical attachment phase." The court suggested Montgomery could maintain his parenting role by entering Sweden visa-free as a visitor, a framing his lawyer called unworkable given three-day-a-week care responsibilities. Montgomery's legal team argues the case engages EU free movement rights — his son is a German citizen, and under EU law, family members of EU citizens have derivative residence rights. The migration court ruled Montgomery had "not demonstrated that he met the conditions for the right of residence as a family member of an EEA citizen." This interpretation is now before the higher migration court, where the EU law dimension will face fuller scrutiny. The human cost is compounding. Montgomery says he cannot leave Sweden to visit his 98-year-old grandmother in the UK, fearing he would be blocked from returning. He grew up without his own father and describes the situation as "almost like torture" — forced to choose between fulfilling his parenting role and seeing elderly relatives. The couple separated shortly after the child's birth, but Montgomery stayed specifically to be present as a father. This case sits at the intersection of three post-Brexit fault lines: the loss of automatic EU residency rights for UK nationals, the tension between member states' immigration sovereignty and EU free movement protections for EU-citizen children, and the gap between Sweden's stated child-welfare values and their application when immigration enforcement is on the other side of the scale. Montgomery is appealing, and the higher court's decision will signal whether Sweden's judiciary treats a child's EU citizenship as a meaningful constraint on deportation or as legally inert when the parent is a post-Brexit Briton. Sweden's migration agency has been approached for comment. The German government said it could not comment on the case.
