RASC News Agency: The Director General of Security and Law Enforcement at the Semnan Governor’s Office in Iran has announced that since the beginning of the year, 14,000 Afghanistani migrants have been arrested and deported from the province. On Sunday, February 23, Mahmoud Ghodrati stated that the Islamic Republic’s policy is to detain and expel Afghanistani migrants who lack legal residency documents, describing their presence in Iran as a “problem.” “This is a four-decade-old issue that cannot be resolved overnight. The process of addressing the presence of undocumented foreigners in the province must be gradual, and we are systematically working toward that goal,” Ghodrati stated. He also confirmed that a number of Afghanistani migrants in Semnan had been detained and transferred to holding camps in preparation for deportation.
The crackdown on Afghanistani migrants in Semnan has intensified following a murder case in which provincial officials accused a “foreign national” of involvement in the killing of a young Iranian man. On Monday, February 17, the head of Semnan’s judiciary announced that the perpetrators of the murder of a 28-year-old man in Mahdishahr County had been arrested. The province’s police chief further stated that one of the suspects is a foreign national and that personal disputes were the primary motive behind the crime. Local authorities in Semnan have not disclosed the nationality of the foreign suspect involved in the case. However, several Iranian social media users have attributed the incident to Afghanistani migrants and have called for their mass deportation.
While the Iranian government has significantly escalated the detention and expulsion of Afghanistani refugees in recent months, analysts warn that the Islamic Republic’s portrayal of migrants as scapegoats for criminal incidents is fueling negative public sentiment, further marginalizing Afghanistani refugees and exacerbating their already precarious situation in the country.
