Pakistan threatens to deport Afghans in resettlement programs if cases are not swiftly processed
ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan has threatened to deport Afghan refugees awaiting relocation to a third country unless their cases are swiftly processed by the host governments, officials said Monday.
Around 20,000 Afghans are in limbo in Pakistan after President Donald Trump paused U.S. refugee programs last month.
Tens of thousands of Afghans fled Taliban rule and were approved for resettlement in the U.S. through a program to help people at risk because of their work with the U.S. government, media, aid agencies and rights groups. But in his first days in office, Trump’s administration announced the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program would be suspended from Jan. 27 for at least three months.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif decided last week that these Afghans would be deported unless the countries that promised to resettle them processed their cases swiftly, according to two security officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity as they were not authorized to talk to the media on the record.
They also said that Afghans awaiting resettlement overseas would be evicted from the capital, Islamabad, and the nearby city of Rawalpindi. Pakistan would coordinate with foreign diplomatic missions to relocate these Afghans abroad but would be repatriated to Afghanistan if there was no relocation.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which last month said Afghans awaiting relocation were meant to leave the country by September.
There are around 1.45 million Afghan refugees who are in Pakistan legally and their stay has been extended until June, the two officials said.
Pakistan will continue its crackdown on foreigners who are in the country illegally, they added.
An estimated 800,000 Afghans have either gone back voluntarily or been deported since 2023 despite criticism from U.N. agencies, rights groups and the Taliban.