ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province has intensified arrests of Afghans living without valid visas, its home department said on Friday, as authorities stepped up a nationwide repatriation campaign that has returned more than 2.7 million people to Afghanistan.

Pakistan launched the drive in late 2023, ordering undocumented foreigners, most of them Afghans, to leave amid heightened security concerns and growing tensions with Kabul over militant attacks Islamabad says are planned from Afghan soil. Afghanistan denies allowing militants to use its territory to attack Pakistan.

“Under the clearly defined policy of the Government of Pakistan, the stay of Afghan nationals without a valid visa is illegal,” the Punjab Home Department said in a statement.

“So far, a total of 2,760,653 illegal Afghan residents have been repatriated from Pakistan, including 142,820 from Punjab,” it added.

Pakistan has hosted millions of Afghans since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, through decades of subsequent conflict and a further influx following the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul in 2021. Islamabad says the repatriation policy is necessary because of security and economic pressures.

The Punjab Home Department said 39 holding centers were operating across the province and currently housed 213 Afghans, who were being registered and processed before repatriation through the Torkham border crossing.

Residential areas and markets across Punjab were being checked as part of the campaign, the department said, urging the public to report Afghans staying in the country illegally, identity fraud or suspicious activity to the emergency helpline 15.

The department said the identities of informants would be kept confidential and that action was being taken only against people living in Pakistan illegally.

United Nations data show hundreds of thousands of Afghans have continued to return from Pakistan this year. UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration recorded about 686,200 returns from Pakistan in 2026 through Aug. 22, a figure that includes deportations as well as other forms of return.

Afghan authorities, the United Nations and rights groups have raised concerns about the scale and pace of the returns, and about conditions awaiting people sent back to a country facing widespread poverty, limited employment and sweeping restrictions on women and girls, including a ban on education for girls beyond sixth grade.