Attempts by Afghan citizens to cross illegally into Iran have doubled over the past six months compared with the same period last year, according to Majid Shoja, border guard commander for Iran’s Khorasan Razavi province.
Shoja told Iranian media that about 40,000 Afghan nationals were stopped while trying to enter the province illegally in the first half of this year, compared with 19,000 during the same period in 2024. Iranian authorities routinely refer to undocumented Afghan migrants as “unauthorized foreign nationals.”
“During the first half of this year, we prevented the illegal entry of 40,000 Afghan nationals into Khorasan Razavi, which is double the number from last year,” Shoja said.
He added that all those detained were identified, arrested, and deported immediately after crossing the border.
According to Shoja, arrests of border violators had declined each year from 2021 to 2024, but the trend reversed this year. He attributed the increase in attempted crossings to Iran’s recent mass deportations of undocumented Afghans, which have pushed more people to try reentering the country.
The border commander said around 70 percent of deportations of undocumented Afghans take place through the Dogharoon border crossing between Iran and Afghanistan.
Shoja added that one million Afghan nationals have been deported through Dogharoon since the beginning of the year — three times higher than in the same period last year — and that an additional 500,000 Afghans with valid travel documents have left Iran voluntarily.
