Iran returns almost 5,000 Afghan migrants in less than 24 hours through the Milak crossing

The Iranian Border Guard has announced this Sunday the “hot return” of 4,767 migrants from Afghanistan during the last 24 hours through the Milak pass, in the province of Sistan and Balochistan, in the context of tensions with the Taliban movement over the influx of people on its border line.

The commander of the Border Guard in the area, Parviz Ghasemzadeh, explained that the reasons for the return are “illegal entry into the country” and “expired passports, before insisting that the country will expel anyone who tries to enter the country without complying with legal requirements.

“The fight against the illegal residence of unauthorized foreigners is something that we in Sistan and Balochistan take very seriously,” he said in comments collected by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

The return to power of the Taliban movement has caused a population exodus — 3.6 million Afghans, 70 percent of them to Iran, according to the United Nations International Organization for Migration — which has only ended up worsening the traditional hostility faced by Afghan migrants in Iran, often subjected to physical abuse, including by security forces, according to international NGOs.

Human Rights Watch, for example, has documented human rights violations that include beatings, detention in unsanitary and inhumane conditions, forced payment for transportation and accommodation in deportation camps, forced labor, and forced separation of families.

Iran’s Office for Migrants and Foreigners Affairs estimates that more than 90,000 Afghans have returned to their homeland this year through just one crossing, Taybad, in the north of the country.