The Taliban criticize neighboring countries for their mass expulsion of Afghans
The two countries set deadlines and threatened them with arrest or deportation if they did not comply. They deny targeting Afghans, who make up significant numbers in both countries.
Abdul Rahman Rashid, the Taliban government's deputy minister for refugees and repatriation, rebuked host countries for the mass expulsions and described the removal of Afghans as a 'serious violation of international norms, humanitarian principles, and Islamic values.'
'The scale and manner in which Afghan refugees have been forced to return to their homeland is something Afghanistan has never before experienced in its history," Rashid told a press conference in Kabul.
Nearly 1.8 million Afghans were forcibly returned from Iran in the past three months alone. A further 184,459 were sent back from Pakistan and over 5,000 were deported from Turkey since the beginning of the year. Additionally, nearly 10,000 Afghan prisoners have been repatriated, mostly from Pakistan.
The Ministry of Refugees and Repatriation said some 6 million Afghan refugees remain overseas.
Natural disasters have swelled Afghanistan's refugee population. The ministry's director for policy and planning, Mahmood al Haq Ahadi, said some 13,500 families were internally displaced due to droughts, floods, and storms.
'When combined with prior displacements, the total number of internally displaced families in Afghanistan has now reached nearly 2.5 million," Ahadi said.
The ministry planned to send delegations to hold meetings with host countries focusing on legal support and resolving the challenges faced by Afghan asylum seekers.
'Our goal is to find sustainable solutions through dialogue and cooperation,' Ahadi said.
Humanitarian agencies have warned that the scale and pace of returning Afghans is overwhelming already fragile support systems.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
‘First Amendment has limits': Tom Homan insists that Mahmoud Khalil will be deported
Donald Trump's border czar is adamant that Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil will still be deported from the country despite several court rulings that have kept the Palestinian activist out of detention. A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected a request from the Trump administration to re-arrest Khalil and keep him in immigration detention center while he continues to challenge the government's attempts to remove him from the United States. Homan says the administration will continue to appeal. 'We got radical judges just trying to stop the Trump administration from doing our job and enforcing the law,' he told Newsmax on Thursday. He claimed there is 'only one ending' to Khalil's case: 'We detain him and deport him, but regardless, he will be deported.' That same day, the immigration court judge overseeing his case voided her earlier ruling that allowed the government to deport him. Khalil, a prominent student activist against Israel's war in Gaza, was stripped of his green card and arrested in front of his then-pregnant wife in their New York City apartment building on March 8. He was then sent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, where he was held for more than 100 days and forced to miss the birth of his child. Trump administration officials have accused Khalil of 'antisemitic activities,' allegations Khalil and his legal team have flatly denied. Officials concede that Khalil did not commit any crime, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has sought to justify Khalil's arrest by claiming that Khalil's presence in the country undermines foreign policy interests to prevent antisemitism. Khalil and his legal team argue his arrest and detention — and attempted removal from the country, which is currently blocked by court order — are retaliatory violations of his First Amendment right to freedom of speech and his Fifth Amendment right to due process of law, among other claims. 'Look, First Amendment rights have a limitation, too,' Homan told Newsmax. 'He did a lot of bad things. We're going to hold him accountable. He will be deported.' On June 11, a federal judge granted Khalil's release from ICE detention on bail while legal challenges against his arrest and threat of removal from the country continue in both federal and immigration courts. New Jersey District Judge Michael Farbiarz ruled that the administration had unconstitutionally wielded the law against Khalil, whose 'career and reputation are being damaged and his speech is being chilled,' the judge wrote. The government has 'little or no interest in applying the relevant underlying statutes in what is likely an unconstitutional way,' Farbiarz added. 'Mahmoud spent 104 days in detention as punishment for speaking out for Palestinian rights,' ACLU senior staff attorney Noor Zafar said in a statement after this week's appeals court ruling. 'That is time with his family that he will never get back, but this decision affirms that he will remain free and that the government cannot pursue his removal based on the likely unconstitutional foreign policy charge as his case moves through appeal,' she added. 'We will not stand by and allow the government to weaponize immigration law to suppress lawful political speech.' Khalil's attorneys have also argued that the administration's secondary basis for his arrest and removal — allegations that he lied in immigration paperwork — are similarly retaliatory and violate his First Amendment and Fifth Amendment due process rights. The White House continues to insist that Khalil can still be deported on those grounds. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told The Independent on Friday that 'Khalil was given the privilege of coming to America to study on a student visa he obtained by fraud and misrepresentation.' 'Despite the lower court judge's wishes to the contrary, the executive branch has the lawful authority to take actions that will protect America's foreign policy interests and promote the overall welfare of the public,' she added. 'The Trump Administration looks forward to ultimate victory on the issue.'
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Judge blocks Trump from fast-tracking deportations of immigrants paroled into US
Aug 1 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from fast-tracking the deportation of potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants who were paroled into the United States under Biden-era humanitarian programs. U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in Washington, D.C. said it served the public interest to put on hold the Department of Homeland Security's expedited removals for those who entered with temporary parole, rather than cause irreparable harm to immigrants by allowing them. Cobb also quoted a recent dissenting opinion by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in rejecting DHS' assertion of a substantial interest in carrying out President Donald Trump's policies, including the prompt removal of immigrants not entitled to stay. "This case presents a question of fair play," Cobb wrote. "This court will not endorse the radical proposition that the President is harmed, irreparably, whenever he cannot do something he wants to do, even if what he wants to do is break the law." DHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Expedited removals could allow immigrant parolees to be deported without hearings or lawyers. The lawsuit challenging them had been brought by three immigrant rights groups whose members included parolees subject to that process. "Over the last few months, immigrants who entered the country with parole have been living a nightmare," Ama Frimpong, legal director of one of the groups, CASA, said in a statement. "They can now sleep a little easier with the relief, however temporary it is, that this court decision has offered." Trump, a Republican, has sought to deport record numbers of immigrants, but complained that courts and existing laws get in the way. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have in recent months arrested immigrants at courthouses, following a legal maneuver where immigration judges dropped people's cases so that they could be placed in expedited removal. Cobb was appointed to the bench by Democratic President Joe Biden. The case is Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights et al v Noem et al, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, No. 25-00872.
The Independent
3 hours ago
- The Independent
Lawyer says he's not been allowed to see 5 immigrants deported by the US to a prison in Eswatini
Five immigrants deported by the United States to Eswatini in a secret deal last month had served their criminal sentences before they were sent to be held in a prison in the African country, a lawyer working on their cases said Friday. The Eswatini lawyer also said the men from Cuba, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Vietnam sent to southern Africa under President Donald Trump 's third-country deportation program have been denied access to legal representation while being held in Eswatini's main maximum-security prison. The lawyer, Sibusiso Nhlabatsi, said he hasn't been allowed to see the men and that he filed court papers Thursday against the head of Eswatini's correctional services department and the country's attorney general, demanding access to them. He said he is representing them on behalf of lawyers in the U.S. and was prevented from seeing them by Eswatini prison officials on July 25. It's unlawful for the men, who have been in Eswatini for around two weeks, to be denied access to a lawyer, he added. The Eswatini government has said the men will be held in solitary confinement until they can be deported to their home countries, which could take up to a year. 'They have served their sentences,' Nhlabatsi told The Associated Press. 'If a person has committed a crime and they have served a sentence, why are you then keeping them in a prison?' Nhlabatsi said the men have not been able to communicate with their families or receive visitors since arriving in Eswatini, although prison officials said they were in the process of setting up devices to allow them to speak with their families. He alleged their ongoing detention could have legal implications for Eswatini, a small country bordering South Africa and one of the world's last absolute monarchies, ruled by a king accused of cracking down on dissent. The Trump administration has come under scrutiny for its choice of African countries to strike deportation deals with. It deported eight immigrants described as violent criminals to South Sudan in early July in an operation that was halted by a legal challenge in the U.S. The eight were held for weeks in a converted shipping container at an American military base in nearby Djibouti while the case was decided. A Supreme Court ruling eventually cleared the way for them to be sent to South Sudan. Both South Sudan, which is in danger of tipping into civil war, and Eswatini have poor rights records and governments accused of being repressive. Critics say the deportees, who the administration says were in the U.S. illegally, will likely be denied due process in those countries. The five sent to Eswatini were also described by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security as serious criminals. Their convictions included murder and child rape, the department said in social media posts, calling them 'uniquely barbaric." The department, which did not say if they had completed their sentences, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. An Eswatini government spokesman also declined to comment on Nhlabatsi's allegations, saying it was now a matter for the courts. Nhlabatsi said the deportees are being held at the Matsapha Correctional Complex near the administrative capital, Mbabane, the same prison said to hold pro-democracy activists on trumped up charges. The government has declined to say where the five men are being held, citing security concerns. Eswatini's statement about the five men ultimately being deported to their home countries appears to contradict claims by the U.S. that their home countries refused to take the men back. Activists in Eswatini have demanded that the details of the agreement with the U.S. be made public but the government has said they are 'classified.' South Sudan has also declined to give details of its agreement to take deportees from the U.S. ___
