Under the blistering morning sun and a cloud of border dust, Suleiman, 43, stepped off a crowded transport truck and into a country he left 15 years ago. Once a shopkeeper in Faryab Province, he had sold his house and possessions to pursue a better life in Iran. Now, like thousands of others, he has returned with nothing.
“If I had stayed, maybe I’d be one of the successful ones at home,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead near the Islam Qala border crossing in western Afghanistan. “I sold everything for this journey. I paid almost 290,000 Afghanis to get to Iran. And now they’ve sent us back — no money, no home, no documents.”
Suleiman is one of thousands of Afghans being deported each day as Iran steps up mass expulsions of undocumented migrants. While the Iranian government says it is enforcing immigration rules, deportees describe the process as harsh, humiliating, and increasingly arbitrary.
“They wouldn’t sell us bread. They cut off our water. It was like they were trying to force us out with pressure from all sides,” said Ali Madad Nabi Zada, another returnee. “Even when I tried to get a taxi to move closer to the border, police stopped us.”
This latest wave of expulsions follows Iran’s formal cancellation of Afghan census registration cards earlier this month — documents that had long provided a thin layer of legal protection for hundreds of thousands of Afghan nationals. Now, according to sources familiar with Iranian immigration enforcement, authorities are preparing to revoke and invalidate former military identification cards next.
If carried out, the new policy could expose thousands of Afghans — including those who once served in the former Afghan National Army and police — to forced return, despite the well-documented risks they face under Taliban rule.
The Islam Qala crossing, the busiest border point between Iran and Afghanistan, has become a focal point of a growing humanitarian emergency. Between 16,000 and 22,000 people are now crossing daily, according to U.N. estimates.
“We came back with nothing,” said Nazieh, a young woman who had lived in Iran since early childhood. “Now we’re standing in line, hoping for a ride to a province we barely know anymore.”
Most of the returnees — many of them women and children — arrive with no shelter, no food, and no access to immediate health care. Humanitarian agencies say the current pace of returns is overwhelming border reception centers and exposing migrants to dangerous conditions.
According to the United Nations, over 1.6 million Afghans have returned — either voluntarily or through deportation — from Iran and Pakistan since the start of the year.
Aid groups report that many expelled families lack even basic support. Access to clean water, food, shelter, and medical services remains dangerously limited, especially for the most vulnerable.
Political Uncertainty and Growing Pressure
The Iranian government has defended the expulsions as a matter of border security and economic necessity. However, rights advocates say the actions violate international norms — particularly as many Afghans fear persecution if returned.
In particular, the reported plan to target holders of former military or police IDs has raised alarm among human rights monitors, who note that these individuals may face reprisal from the Taliban.
For now, the tide of returnees continues.
They arrive on foot, in trucks, or crammed into buses, some carrying children, others just plastic bags. Their faces are marked by exhaustion and anxiety — uncertain not only about where they will sleep that night, but whether they are welcome in the country they once called home.
