Pakistan has moved to the enforcement phase of its Afghan deportation drive as the July 10 voluntary departure deadline expired, with provincial authorities instructed to begin arresting undocumented Afghan nationals immediately and to report daily statistics on detentions and deportations to the Ministry of Interior from July 11 (Arab News; Pakistan Today; Deccan Herald).
Chief secretaries, deputy commissioners, district administrations and law enforcement agencies across all provinces and Islamabad have been directed to ensure “uniform and effective implementation” of the Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan (IFRP), the policy framework that has governed Pakistani deportations since October 2023. The daily reporting requirement — covering the number of Afghans identified, actions taken, and their legal or detention status — is designed to track enforcement pace at the ministry level.
More than 14,000 Afghan families departed voluntarily between July 1 and July 6 in advance of the deadline. Pakistani officials have framed the enforcement operation as a national security measure, pointing to the linkage between undocumented Afghan communities and TTP infiltration routes, and to the cost of hosting a large refugee population without commensurate international burden-sharing.
UNHCR’s position
The UN Refugee Agency has renewed its call on Pakistan to halt forced returns, citing the principle of non-refoulement: the prohibition on returning individuals to places where they face serious risk of persecution or harm. Taliban-controlled Afghanistan provides no institutional protection for multiple categories of returnees — including women who held public sector or civil society roles, former government employees, journalists, Hazara community members, and others targeted under Taliban decrees (Refugees International).
Pakistan’s government has maintained that enforcement applies to undocumented individuals and visa overstayers, not to UNHCR-registered refugees. Rights organisations have documented cases of registered card-holders being detained and deported in earlier enforcement rounds, a pattern they say the daily reporting requirement is unlikely to address without a specific exemption mechanism.
More than two million Afghans have returned or been deported from Pakistan since 2023 under the IFRP and predecessor policies.
