Iran to expel 2m illegal migrants

Authorities in Iran are planning to deport no fewer than two million people without legal residency status by the end of March 2025.

The commander of the security forces, Ahmad-Resa Radan said this on Tuesday.

A debate about the large number of migrants from neighbouring Afghanistan, who have been fleeing their country since the Taliban takeover in 2021, has been raging in Iran for months.

Earlier, the Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, stressed the plight of Afghans, saying they were “cultured people” but added that Iran “cannot take in so many migrants”.

“We have a plan to deal with this matter in an organised and non-agitated way, and the priority is the illegal migrants,” Momeni said.

There are indications that no fewer than 4.5 million Afghan refugees currently live in Iran, many of them without a residency permit, according to the UN refugee agency.

Iranian media believe the unofficial number is much higher.

Estimates put the number of Afghan migrants in the country at six million, while others put it at eight million.

In the metropolises, many of them work in the low-wage sector – for example in small supermarkets or on construction sites.

Ongoing conflicts, extreme poverty and high unemployment, force thousands of Afghans to emigrate to Iran illegally every year.

The neighbouring countries share a border more than 900 kilometres long in partly uninhabited areas, which makes border checks difficult.

Iran is planning to build a guarded border wall in the north-east of the country.

Afghanistan’s neighbour Pakistan had also expelled a large number of refugees.