Iranian police have detained 43 undocumented Afghan migrants in the northern province of Mazandaran, local authorities said.
Bahador Deylami, the police chief of Tonekabon city in Mazandaran, said the arrests followed intelligence reports about the presence of undocumented foreign nationals in the area. He said police units identified and detained the migrants after coordinating with judicial authorities.
Iranian officials refer to undocumented Afghan migrants as “illegal foreign nationals” and say the detainees had entered Tonekabon unlawfully, Deylami added.
He urged Iranian citizens not to employ undocumented Afghan migrants, warning that violators would face legal action.
The arrests come as Iran has stepped up deportations of Afghan migrants in recent months, particularly following the country’s 12-day conflict with Israel. Iranian authorities have been deporting, on average, up to about 400 Afghan migrants a day, both forcibly and voluntarily, according to officials.
The crackdown has drawn criticism from human rights groups and migrant advocacy organisations, but Iranian authorities have continued the policy.
Earlier, Nader Yarahmadi, head of Iran’s Interior Ministry’s center for foreign nationals and migrants, said about 5 million Afghans were living in Iran. He said 1.6 million undocumented Afghan migrants had been expelled since the launch of Iran’s “return of illegal nationals” program.
In remarks to state news agency ISNA, Yarahmadi said an estimated 4.5 million Afghans remain in Iran, adding that irregular border crossings mean between 400,000 and 500,000 Afghan migrants are considered a “floating population”. He said cases of undocumented Afghans re-entering Iran have increased recently.
