Pakistan’s Interior Ministry issued a written directive on Sunday ordering the arrest of any Afghan national found in the country without a valid visa from July 10, instructing all provincial chief secretaries and the Islamabad Capital Territory administration to implement the order and submit daily reports beginning July 11 (Dawn; Arab News).
The directive, which follows a review meeting under the Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan (IFRP) held on June 1, was issued one day after a deadly attack on a Rangers camp in Karachi killed three paramilitary soldiers — an attack claimed by Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a TTP splinter group (Pakistan Today). The ministry said daily arrest totals and detention status must be reported to Islamabad starting July 11.
Pakistan launched its Afghan deportation drive in November 2023, setting successive deadlines and revoking hundreds of thousands of Proof of Registration (PoR) cards and Afghan Citizen Cards (ACCs) issued to refugees and undocumented migrants. The repatriation campaign has been criticised by the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, which has warned of the humanitarian risks facing Afghans forcibly returned to Taliban-governed Afghanistan.
Pakistan currently hosts an estimated 1.3 to 2 million registered Afghan refugees and an unknown number of undocumented Afghans. The new July 10 deadline tightens the screws on a community that has no functioning diplomatic mechanism to appeal to: bilateral diplomatic ties between Islamabad and Kabul have been intermittently frozen throughout the current cross-border conflict.
