Illegal migration, begging: 66,154 passengers offloaded, FIA DG tells NA panel

ISLAMABAD: Director General (DG) of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Raja Riffat Mukhtar has said that illegal migration and begging rings are severely damaging Pakistan’s international image and because of this phenomenon, 66,154 passengers were offloaded this year, a significant increase from the 35,000 offloaded the previous year.

He made these staggering revelations during a meeting of the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development, chaired by Syed Rafiullah here on Wednesday.

The DG FIA reported that 56,000 beggars were deported from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The latter has put in place restrictions on visas.

FIA offloads, detains numerous passengers for illegal Europe travel bid

He briefed the Committee on operational realities at points of exit. He explained that the spike in off-loadings is multifaceted. The FIA clarified that 51,000 of these individuals were stopped due to questionable veracity of their travel documents, falling into three main categories: work visas, tourist visas, and Umrah visas.

Additionally, illegal migration trends have been observed toward Africa, and even on tourist visas to countries like Cambodia and Thailand. FIA officials defended the stringent measures as necessary to curb human trafficking and protect Pakistan’s international standing.

The DG FIA noted that the surge in offloading is a countermeasure against fraudulent migration rings, revealing that 56,000 individuals involved in organized begging were recently deported from Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, officials pointed to growing restrictions from the UAE and emerging illegal migration routes toward Africa and Europe as drivers for the heightened vigilance.

The chairman and the members welcomed the enforcement work but emphasised that enforcement must be paired with an accessible redressal channel so that genuine travelers who are wrongly offloaded may get rapid relief. The Committee therefore directed FIA and the Ministry of Interior to finalise, publish, and operationalise a clear SOP for off-loading and an airport-visible complaints mechanism.

The committee also apprised that a risk-analysis unit has been created and an ‘IMMI’ mobile application is being developed to improve pre-departure screening and real-time monitoring of immigration counters.

The ministry presented the CWA network briefing. Members were given a full account of the legal basis for CWAs (Emigration Ordinance, 1979), the merit-based selection process, KPIs, and the Ministry’s expansion plan to restore and add CWA wings at priority stations.

The Committee took detailed note of the Gulf-region returns: CWAs reported collectively handling over 55,000 welfare cases in 2025, including more than 30,000 assisted repatriations/ETDs, more than 3,400 death-related interventions, and thousands of prison visits and legal-aid interventions.

The Committee welcomed these achievements but also recorded persistent operational constraints — passport confiscation by employers, employer resistance to dues recovery, host-country legal limitations, language barriers, and weak outreach to remote labour camps — and stressed that these constraints must be addressed through bilateral engagement and strengthened in-mission capacity.

On the Gulf-region performance, the members highlighted noteworthy outcomes — rapid issuance of Emergency Travel Documents, targeted repatriations, and coordinated legal support — while pressing for better prevention (pre-departure orientation and contract validation), improved employer engagement, and a dedicated legal-aid panel in mission posts to speed judicial remedies.

The Committee therefore directed the Ministry to provide full, station-wise performance returns for each CWA in the Gulf (including case-level summaries, staff rosters, and resourcing requests) and to table a prioritised plan for the next ten new stations envisaged in the presentation.

In terms of institutional reforms, the committee recorded immediate recommendations: first, that an SOP and public complaint mechanism for offloaded passengers be produced and displayed at all airports; and that the full list and performance returns of Gulf CWAs be submitted to the committee.

The meeting was attended by MNAs Zulfiqar Ali Bhatti, Mian Khan Bugti, Erum Hamid, MahJabeen Khan Abbasi, Zulfiqar Ali Behn, Saeeda Jamshid, Dr Mehreen Razzaq Bhutto, Sofia Saeed Shah, and Muhammad Ilyas Choudhary, along with officers of the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis and Human Resource Development and the FIA.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025