Iran’s harrowing drive to deport Afghan refugees

Zahra Nader

IN THE EARLY HOURS of 30 June 2025, Shir Mohammad woke up to the sound of Iranian police kicking in his door. “They stormed the room, beat us with their boots, and dragged us outside without warning,” he recalled, standing in a dusty refugee reception centre in the border town Islam Qala in Afghanistan’s Herat province. Mohammad had crossed into Iran from Baghlan province in northeastern Afghanistan ten months earlier, fleeing the economic collapse that followed the Taliban’s takeover in 2021. Like millions of others, he hoped to find work in Iran and send money home. Instead, he was detained, abused and deported with empty hands.

Since March 2025, more than 717,000 Afghan refugees and migrants have been forcibly deported from Iran, according to Iranian officials. The Afghan arm of the International Organization for Migration says the total number of people deported in 2025 has already crossed one million. The campaign has intensified in recent months, targeting undocumented Afghans and also those holding temporary census slips that granted them recognition of their refugee status and access to essential services, which were abruptly cancelled by the Iranian government.

Accounts from Afghan returnees reveal a pattern of systematic abuse, detention without due process and torture while in custody. Among those deported are women who were the sole providers for their families or were travelling alone, and who face an impossible situation in Afghanistan. Upon return, they are subject to the Taliban’s edicts that restrict their freedom of movement without a mahram (a close male relative), cannot receive higher education and cannot work outside their homes.

Afghan families are navigating growing hostility, scapegoating, systemic neglect and violence while being forcibly returned to Afghanistan. Although Pakistan’s similar deportation campaign has received more media coverage, Iran’s actions are larger in scale, quieter in execution, and arguably more brutal. According to Afghan and international observers, the combined effect of both countries’ deportation drives has created a humanitarian emergency that the Taliban government is ill-equipped to handle.

After his arrest, Shir Mohammad was transferred to the infamous Tapeh Tambaku camp near Tehran. “We were packed into rooms without air. They gave one small portion of boiled rice for every two people,” he said. “There was no water. People collapsed in the heat. I saw them beating three Afghans who died as the result of the beating. I saw one of their bodies carried out in front of my eyes.”

A 22-year-old returnee from Baghlan described a similar ordeal. “One of the people who died in front of us was around 28 years old. They beat him severely, and then took his body away. I don’t know where they took it,” he told Himal Southasian. “Several others collapsed and died from the extreme heat. The police came and dragged their bodies away. I don’t know if they threw them in the garbage or took them somewhere else.”

The Baghlan returnee had migrated to Iran alone to save money for university and had only been there for three months when he was arrested in the middle of the night on 3 July. “I saw another man in the Tapeh Tambaku camp who was eating when the police came and struck him on the head. He lost consciousness and became unresponsive. They dragged him out too, and I don’t know what happened to him.”

OVER A DOZEN PEOPLE who spoke with Himal Southasian described a process in which physical violence, humiliation and denial of food or medical care were commonplace. Most reported being deported without any chance to collect wages or belongings. Many had paid sizable sums for rental deposits, which they now couldn’t recover. Some were under contracted employment but had not received their wages – a common problem in Iran, where employment is often informal and unregulated.

Nader Yarahmadi, the head of the refugee affairs office under Iran’s Ministry of Interior, claimed in an interview with Iranian media that reception centres had been set up along the border, and that those deported were being provided food, transport and other means of support. Yarahmadi even suggested that Afghans who were owed wages or rent deposits could seek legal redress through the Afghan embassy or with the help of pro bono lawyers. Iranian authorities have portrayed the deportation process as orderly.

But this narrative clashes with the testimonies of Afghan refugees. Most had no chance to file claims before being deported. A 40-year-old father of three from Afghanistan’s Balkh province went to his employer of 14 years, with his deportation letter in hand. He said he was owed 250 million toman – roughly USD 5900. “I begged him to pay me so I can return to Afghanistan. Instead, he accused me of stealing from him and threatened to report me to the police if I dare to ask for my money,” he told Himal Southasian from a refugee reception centre in Herat, where he had made a tent with a piece of blue cloth and his own bags. “Even dogs have more value than us,” he said, wiping tears away.

Afghan refugees were expelled from construction sites, others from their homes in the dead of night. Many alleged that police or local officials extorted money in exchange for faster deportation from the refugee detention centres.

In provinces like Herat and Nimroz on the Afghan side of the border, returnees described scenes of chaos. “There’s no shade, no water, no support,” said the Baghlan returnee. “The heat is unbearable. Some people fainted right there. Others have nothing to go back to.”

The deportation process by Iran reflects a broader strategy of racialised dispossession. Afghan refugees, long present in Iran, are increasingly viewed not as asylum seekers, but as demographic threats, economic burdens, and are sometimes used as political scapegoats.

In July 2025, the non-state Iranian newspaper Ham-Mihan published a report alleging that Afghan women were responsible for a disproportionately high number of births in Tehran hospitals. The article implied that refugee families were driving up the demand for food, electricity and water, and contributing to social instability. In April 2022, Eghtesad News, a pro-establishment online media outlet claimed that up to 75 percent of births in Tehran hospitals were to Afghan women, a number that was later debunked by fact-checkers. According to health officials, the actual share of births to all non-Iranians, including Afghans, was under five percent.

These claims, framed as concern over “unauthorised” population growth, echo earlier statements from state-aligned media outlets. In 2023, the Islamic Republic newspaper ran a headline that read: “South Tehran under the occupation of Afghans.” Overall, the media coverage of Afghan refugees presented them both as a danger to society and a security problem.

This narrative has taken root. Xenophobic hashtags about Afghan refugees trend regularly on Iranian social media. Rhetoric about large numbers of undocumented Afghan refugees posing security risks and draining the economy are uncritically amplified by journalists, business leaders and international non-profit organisations alike.

According to one theory floated by United Against Nuclear Iran, a US-based anti-nuclear weapon non-profit organisation, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei is using Afghan Shia refugees to create the illusion of a loyal constituency at regime-organised events, even as support for the regime is waving after protests in 2022 following the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police. Despite their supposed use to the regime, Afghans in Iran lack legal status, political rights, or access to basic services, and now face a forced and abusive deportation process.

Afghan refugees have served two distinct purposes in Iran. First, they have been a source of cheap, easily exploitable labour that fuels key sectors such as construction, agriculture and manufacturing, often under harsh conditions and without legal protections. Second, they have been used as a tool of Iran’s foreign policy.

In recent years, the Iranian government has recruited thousands of Afghan refugees, many of them undocumented or impoverished, to fight in proxy wars, most notably in Syria. These fighters have been deployed as part of the Fatemiyoun Brigade, a paramilitary group that supported the Assad regime. The promises of money, legal status or residency have been difficult for many Afghan refugees to refuse, especially in the face of poverty and statelessness.

While the Iranian government denied forcing Afghan refugees to fight in Syria, Qasem Soleimani, the former commander of the Quds Force, a unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps responsible for foreign operations, had praised Afghans’ “productive” participation in the Syrian conflict. In 2016, Iran passed legislation that allowed the government to issue citizenship to non-Iranians fighting on its behalf.

This contradictory discourse portraying Afghans as both burdens and tools justifies harsh policies against refugees while redirecting public anger over Iran’s ongoing economic crisis towards a more vulnerable population instead. Driven by corruption, government mismanagement and sweeping US sanctions, the crisis has left Iranians grappling with inflation, continued unemployment and unaffordable housing. Even before the recent Israel–Iran war, which raised concerns about global energy supply disruptions, prices in Iran had already risen by 35 percent in the last year.

While Afghan migrants have lived in Iran since the late 19th century, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 led to refugees fleeing to Iran in numbers, with continuous waves of migration over the past four decades spurred by war, drought and political repression, most recently after the Taliban takeover in 2021. Some refugees obtained residency cards or temporary work permits, but the majority remain in legal limbo. They are barred from many professions, excluded from property ownership, and often live in overcrowded conditions.

Even second- or third-generation Afghan refugees born in Iran remain undocumented. They are excluded from public education, healthcare and housing. Afghans are banned from entering certain provinces or cities under Iran’s “no-go area” policy imposed in 2007, which bars foreign nationals, including refugees, from some areas on grounds of public interest, security or health. In December 2023, Afghans were banned from living, travelling to or seeking employment in 16 provinces in Iran.

Afghans must also apply for a permit to travel between provinces, with those not following this requirement facing arrest or deportation. In practice, these policies have heightened scrutiny on Afghans. In 2012, Afghans were banned from entering a public park in the city of Esfahan to mark Nature Day, with police saying Afghans had caused “insecurity” in previous years. The current wave of deportations simply makes visible the structural precarity long embedded in the Iranian state’s approach to Afghan refugees.

FOR RETURNEES, crossing the border into Afghanistan is not a homecoming, it is another descent into uncertainty. Many arrive at the border with no money, no food and no shelter. Humanitarian agencies provide emergency rations and medical support, but resources are stretched. According to the International Organization for Migration, over 450,000 Afghans were returned from Iran between January and May 2025, including more than 30,000 families. While the overall flow of undocumented returnees was predominantly male, the demographic profile shifted sharply among family units, where women and children made up nearly three-quarters of returnees. This shift underscores the growing vulnerability of women, many of whom return with children, limited resources, and no access to work, healthcare or safe shelter in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

A 24-year-old young mother from Herat returned to Afghanistan in her seventh month of pregnancy. “I crochet at home to help support my family. My husband was injured while working on a construction site, he had fallen and couldn’t work,” she said. “We paid 130 million toman [around USD 3080] in advance rent. We never got it back.”

In the Tapeh Tambaku camp in Tehran, she found herself trapped in a stifling space with hundreds of others. “I fainted often. I had no medical care. My four-year old son was sick, but I couldn’t get him medicine. We had nothing.”

Returnees like the 24-year-old mother reported waiting in scorching heat for hours or days to receive aid. Children were falling sick. Families were forced to travel hundreds of kilometres to their places of origin without support.

Iran’s campaign comes alongside similar measures by Pakistan, which in late 2023 launched a phased crackdown initially targeting undocumented Afghans. In the cities of Karachi, Rawalpindi and Lahore, police have raided homes, rounded up refugees and expelled entire families, including those with long-standing legal status under the Afghan Citizen Card registered by the International Organization for Migration and the Proof of Registration card issued by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

A woman from Takhar province recounted being given just hours to leave her home with her husband and eight children. “They beat people in the street, loaded us into trucks. We were terrified,” she said. “We left everything, furniture, livestock, even the house we built.”

Despite widespread documentation of abuse, there has been little international condemnation. The UNHCR has expressed concern, but its access to detention centres in Iran remains limited. Taliban authorities, eager to maintain relations with Tehran, have avoided harsh public criticism, instead calling for “leniency” or “dignified” returns.

Meanwhile, Iranian officials deny wrongdoing. Yarahmadi recently told state media that “not even one instance of mistreatment” had occurred in official camps, citing the presence of surveillance cameras. He added that deportees were being “treated with dignity” and that “Iran has hosted Afghan brothers for decades.”

But the gap between official rhetoric and lived experience is vast.

Afghan refugees have often been used by the Iran and Pakistan governments to shift attention away from their own problems – their presence tolerated when politically useful and rejected when inconvenient.

What makes the current wave of deportations particularly disturbing is its convergence with rising social media hate against Afghan refugees, and frustration with Iran’s economic crisis and authoritarian governance. The deportations are not simply about migration control, but about shaping public opinion, managing dissent and disciplining a vulnerable population of refugees.

The consequences are devastating. Families are torn apart. Women are giving birth in tents. And thousands, like the 24-year-old mother from Herat, return not to safety, but to a future of hunger, unemployment and invisibility. She fears for her unborn girl and wishes a different fate for her, one that she knows will never materialise under Taliban rule: “I just want my daughter to have a job, to stand on her own if her husband ever gets sick like mine. I don’t want her to suffer like I did.”

The article appeared in himalmag