So sorry that you had to go through the super unsettling situation. I find your experience quite relatable cuz it happened to me twice, both times at Brussels airport (I guess that really says a lot about the country).
First time was the the passport control where the officer, upon seeing my documents from multiple jurisdictions, asked me where exactly I lived and what “AR Investimento” meant. I explained to him that I studied and lived outside of the EU, but I acquired access to Portugal through my investment, which entitled me to a Residence Permit. It took him a few minutes to process the info, and funny enough after stamping my passport he asked in really shocked tone, “So you invest money in there and they give you a residence permit?”
Second time a similar situation happened but at the custom. The officer was super aggressive and rude. I explained my situation politely and patiently, but he wouldn’t listen and said that he would not believe a word from me. He kept threatening me, virtually saying that he could cuff me and put me in jail immediately if I kept lying, which could not be further from the truth. What he did after the threats was even more shocking: he took away my passport and all my documents issued in other jurisdictions. I politely informed him that he had no right to do so, but he said he could do “whatever he wanted.”
I managed to retain my composure and explained politely again and again, reasserting that I was telling the truth. He still found it hard to believe and went to the back office “to call Portugal right now”, towards which I felt completely speechless (“Portugal” ain’t picking up nobody’s call LMAO). He came back after some 10 minutes and said nothing. He gave me back my documents and told me to “go, leave now.”
Also a minor incident in Greece: the passport control officer did not know that there was then a new design for Schengen’s residence permit. He was polite but genuinely confused, so he went to the back office probably to seek help from his supervisor. A few minutes later he came back and stamped on my passport.
I really thought Schengen countries would surely share their visa/residency information with one another but so far based on my experience I think they may not be sharing as much as we presumed. So I guess potentially there may be an intrinsic risk of confusion and misunderstanding with ARI permits because it somehow stands on the edge, if not outside, of Schengen’s visa framework yet entitles the holder to the benefits conferred upon under that framework, the secure operation of which, challenging enough, requires high level info-sharing on the part of all Schengen border checkpoints. I am of the opinion that so far as the practical difficulty is to stay, the reality probably wouldn’t change much for ARI holders.
Anyway to be helpful, what worked is I showed him my other two past residency cards. He then implied that the last residency card on their system is my second card and that was why he wanted to quadruple check…