❓WHAT HAPPENED: Nearly one million Afghan migrants without proper documentation in Iran have been deported back to Afghanistan in recent weeks, with another million deportations targeted.
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: Afghan illegal immigrants, Iranian authorities, and the Taliban.
📍WHEN & WHERE: Iran, ongoing since 2023, with significant escalations in recent weeks.
💬KEY QUOTE: “We’ve always striven to be good hosts, but national security is a priority.” – Iranian government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani
🎯IMPACT: The deportations show that mass deportations are perfectly possible over a short timeframe, in countries with far fewer resources than in the West.
Iran has initiated a sweeping deportation campaign targeting Afghan migrants without legal documentation, resulting in the removal of nearly one million illegal immigrants over the past month alone. According to Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, this figure represents approximately half of the estimated two million Afghans currently residing in the country.
The sudden surge in deportations comes in the wake of recent national security incidents linked to Iran’s conflict with Israel. Iranian authorities claim that some Afghan refugees were involved in serious security breaches, including piloting drones, collecting classified intelligence, and executing acts of sabotage. In one report aired on June 26, state-run television broadcast a confession from an Afghan national allegedly involved in a plot to bomb a power station located in southeast Tehran.
“We’ve always striven to be good hosts, but national security is a priority,” stated Iranian government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani. However, some critics argue the crackdown is being used to shift blame for intelligence failures onto the Afghan refugee population.
The Taliban has publicly urged its western neighbor to reconsider the pace of these expulsions, proposing a slower, more structured process. Afghans have already been returned to their homeland en masse from Pakistan, to its east.
The speed and scale of the removals appear to prove that mass deportations are not a logistical impossibility, as anti-deportation activists in the U.S. and other Western countries often contend. Notably, Afghans appear to be a disproportionate threat to public safety wherever they go, with British crime statistics indicating that they are over 22 times more likely to be convicted of sex crimes than locals, for instance.
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