Turkiye deported 3,000+ irregular migrants last week

Displaced Syrian children wait in queue to receive humanitarian aid supplied by Humanitarian Relief Foundation’s (IHH) on 20 February 20, 2020 in Idlib, Syria [Burak Kara/Getty Images]

The Turkish authorities deported 3,038 irregular migrants to their countries of origin between 2 and 8 September.

The Department of Immigration Management at the Ministry of the Interior said that the deportees included 1,492 Afghans and 448 Pakistanis.

The number of irregular migrants who have been deported since the beginning of this year has now reached 78,716.

The department pointed out that security measures implemented at Turkiye’s borders have contributed to blocking 4,352 illegal migrants from entering the country last week.

In total, the number of would-be immigrants thwarted since the beginning of this year is now 209,318.

Earlier, officials at the Bab Al-Hawa border crossing between Turkiye and Syria confirmed that the number of Syrians who were deported from Turkiye last month alone was 2,712.

Turkiye has recently increased the deportation of refugees to northern Syria, which has prompted a few organisations to warn of the repercussions of the procedures involved.

READ: Jordan calls for increasing aid for refugees

Unless otherwise stated in the article above, this work by Middle East Monitor is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. If the image(s) bear our credit, this license also applies to them. What does that mean? For other permissions, please contact us.