PESHAWAR: Since the launch of a nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants on Nov 1, 2023, over 0.4 million undocumented Afghan nationals have returned to their country through the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Officials told Dawn that in November last year, thousands of illegal aliens left the country daily from different border crossings between KP and Afghanistan.

They added that the pace slowed down afterward but the voluntary repatriation never stopped They said that all returning Afghan immigrants were documented.

On Oct 3, 2023, the then caretaker interior minister, Sarfaraz Bugti, announced the Nov 1 deadline for the voluntary return of illegal immigrants from the country and warned that all lawenforcement agencies would deport them all afterward.

`We have set the Nov 1 deadline forillegal immigrants to willingly return to their respective countries and if they don`t comply, our law-enforcement agencies will expel them,` Mr Bugti said in a media briefing after a meeting of the apex committee on the National Action Plan at the Prime Minister`s House.

Soon after that deadline`s expiry on Oct 31, 2023, a crackdown was launched on Nov 1, 2023, and 7,300 refugees, including over 100 prisoners, were deported on Nov 1, via Pak-Afghan border crossing Torkham in Khyber tribal district.

Official documents reveal that since the repatriation began, a total of 421,112 illegal immigrants had left for Afghanistan via KP.

They also show that 413,826 left for Afghanistan voluntarily and 7,286 were deported through KP.

According to the documents, 400 illegal refugees left the country on Saturday, taking the overall tally of the immigrants, who crossed Torkham, to 414,430.

Authorities have so far repatriated 5,983 and 698 undocumented aliens toAfghanistan via Angoor Ada border crossing in South Waziristan tribal district and via Kharlachi border in North Waziristan tribal district respectively, and one to China via Sost border inGilgitBaltistan.

The documents also reveal that apart from illegal immigrants in KP, the provincial government received 1,440 illegal Afghan immigrants from other provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, GilgitBaltistan, and Islamabad.Of them, 1,163 came in from Punjab, 194 from Islamabad, 44 from Sindh, 38 from Azad Jammu and Kashmir and one from Gilgit-Baltistan.

Besides registered Afghan refugees, including 1.3 million with Proof of Registration cards and 0.8 million with Afghan Citizen Cards, and those illegally living in Pakistan, around 0.7 million Afghans have arrived in Pakistan since Jan 2021, according to government officials.