Iran is set to deport two million undocumented foreign nationals by the end of the current Persian calendar year, end of March 2025, according to Ahmadreza Radan, the commander of Iran’s national police.
“The number of undocumented foreign nationals in the country has been determined, but the final statistics must be announced by the Ministry of Interior’s Bureau of Foreign Nationals. Nonetheless, close to two million people will leave the country this year,” Radan said in a press briefing.
This follows previous comments by Esmail Momeni, Iran’s interior minister, who emphasized the urgency of expelling undocumented migrants.
“Iran cannot accommodate this many migrants. We will expel undocumented individuals as quickly as possible,” Momeni said.
According to United Nations estimates, approximately three million Afghan migrants currently live in Iran. However, Iranian authorities have placed the figure closer to five million.
Meanwhile, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported that in the last week of August, over 96,000 people left Afghanistan for Iran and Pakistan, while nearly 76,000 returned to Afghanistan from those countries.
