By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: The interior ministry has ordered the immediate arrest of any Afghan national found in the country without a valid visa from July 10, in the most explicit enforcement directive yet issued under a deportation campaign that has already displaced more than a million people in the past year alone.
The order, addressed to the chief secretaries of all four provinces as well as the administrations of Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and the Islamabad Capital Territory, directs law enforcement agencies to act without delay against undocumented Afghans. The ministry also instructed officials to furnish daily reports to Islamabad on the number of Afghans detained, the action taken against them and their status — with the first such report due on July 11.
“With effect from July 10, 2026, any Afghan national found residing in Pakistan without a valid visa shall be arrested immediately,” the Sunday notification said, adding that the matter should be treated as top priority and implemented “in letter and spirit.”
The directive stems from decisions taken at a June 1 review meeting on Pakistan’s Illegal Foreigners’ Repatriation Plan (IFRP), which the ministry said had already directed all provincial and special area governments to “expedite the repatriation and deportation of Afghan nationals, including visa overstay cases.” Deputy commissioners, district administrations, police and other relevant law enforcement agencies were told to ensure “uniform and effective implementation” of the order nationwide.
The IFRP, launched in October 2023 after a caretaker cabinet meeting chaired by then-Prime Minister Anwarul Haq Kakar, initially gave all undocumented foreigners 30 days to leave or face expulsion. At the time, the United Nations estimated there were roughly 3.8 million Afghans in Pakistan, while Pakistani authorities put the figure as high as 4.4 million, with Afghans accounting for 98 percent of all undocumented foreigners in the country.
Sunday’s notification marks a sharpening of that policy. Officials at the Ministry of Interior and the Chief Commissionerate for Afghan Refugees told a Senate Standing Committee on Kashmir Affairs, Gilgit-Baltistan, SAFRON and Frontier Regions that Pakistan deported a total of 1,155,221 Afghan nationals in 2025. That figure breaks down into 163,429 holders of Proof of Registration (PoR) cards, 74,943 Afghan Citizen Card (ACC) holders, 509,671 undocumented individuals and 407,178 people who left voluntarily.
In 2026, more than 146,000 Afghans have already been deported from Pakistan, according to Refugees International, adding to the more than one million forcibly returned the previous year.
The pace of departures has been climbing. A third phase of the IFRP, targeting holders of PoR cards, commenced in September 2025 and resulted in close to 166,000 PoR holders returning to Afghanistan by late that year, bringing the total since the start of the plan to more than 1.82 million.
Pakistan has deported a total of approximately 2.4 million Afghans between September 2023 and June 2026. The government has cited mounting security concerns as the principal justification, alleging that Afghan nationals are involved in militant attacks carried out by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and its affiliates. The Taliban-led government in Kabul has strongly rejected Islamabad’s accusations and urged Pakistan to reconsider the deportation drive.
Pakistan ranks second among countries most affected by terrorism, according to the Global Terrorism Index, with TTP emerging as the fastest-growing terrorist group in 2024, nearly doubling the number of deaths attributed to it in 2023.
Afghans have sought refuge in Pakistan in successive waves over nearly five decades, driven by the Soviet invasion of the 1980s, years of civil war, United States military operations after 2001 and, most recently, the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021. Following the Taliban takeover, more than 468,000 Afghans returned to Afghanistan between October and December 2023 after the first enforcement wave, often amid reports of arbitrary arrests and harassment.
The campaign has drawn sustained international criticism. In April 2025, several United Nations experts, including Special Rapporteurs on Afghanistan, human rights and violence against women and girls, urged Pakistan to stop deporting Afghan nationals, citing international law’s prohibition on the forced return of people to places where they face harm — the principle of non-refoulement.
The UNHCR has acknowledged Pakistan’s more than 40 years of hosting refugees but said forcing the return of PoR cardholders, who have been recognised as refugees for decades, “would constitute a violation of the principle of non-refoulement.”
About 1.2 million PoR cardholders, 737,000 ACC holders and 115,000 asylum seekers were still in Pakistan as of late 2025, according to UNHCR figures. Pakistan’s government had by that point stopped renewing PoR cards and invalidated existing ones from June 30, 2025.
The Taliban, for their part, have expressed disapproval of Islamabad’s actions. Kabul has urged Pakistan to give Afghans more time to leave and has condemned what it describes as arbitrary arrests and harassment of its nationals.
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