As Iran deports a million Afghans, ‘where do we even go?’

A health clinic at a reception center for Afghan refugees returning from Iran, in the border town of Islam Qala, Afghanistan, on July 12, 2025. At least 1.4 million Afghans have fled or been deported from Iran since January during a clampdown on undocumented refugees, returning to a homeland already grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis and draconian restrictions on women and girls. (Jim Huylebroek/The New York Times)

By Elian Peltier, Farnaz Fassihi and Yaqoob Akbary

At the sand-swept border between Iran and Afghanistan, nearly 20,000 are crossing every day — shocked and fearful Afghans who have been expelled from Iran with few belongings in a wave of targeted crackdowns and xenophobia.

More than 1.4 million Afghans have fled or been deported from Iran since January during a government clampdown on refugees in the country without authorization, according to the United Nations’ refugee agency. More than half a million have been forced into Afghanistan just since the war between Israel and Iran last month, returned to a homeland already grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis and draconian restrictions on women and girls, in one of the worst displacement crises of the past decade.

They are being dumped at an overcrowded border facility in western Afghanistan, where many expressed anger and confusion to New York Times journalists over how they could go on with few prospects in a country where some have never lived, or barely know anymore.

“I worked in Iran for 42 years, so hard that my knees are broken, and for what?” Mohammad Akhundzada, a construction worker, said at a processing center for returnees in Islam Qala, a border town in northwestern Afghanistan, near Herat.

The mass expulsions threaten to push Afghanistan further toward the brink of economic collapse with the sudden cutoff of vital remittance money to Afghan families from relatives in Iran.

The sudden influx of returnees also piles on Afghanistan’s already grim unemployment, housing and health care crises. More than half of Afghanistan’s estimated population of 41 million already relies on humanitarian assistance.

Driven out by abuse and suspicion

Iran hosts the world’s largest refugee population, and about 95% — estimated to be around 4 million — are Afghans, according to the U.N. refugee agency. Iran says the real number is closer to 6 million, after decades of war and upheaval in Afghanistan.

Iran limits where Afghans can live and work — only in 10 of the country’s 31 provinces — and they are usually allowed only arduous, low-skill work.

Iran’s government has said it can no longer absorb Afghan refugees given its own economic crisis and shortage of natural resources, including water and gas.

In March, the government said Afghans in the country without authorization would be deported and set a July 6 deadline for voluntary departures. But after last month’s 12-day conflict with Israel, the crackdown intensified.

Security forces have raided work places and neighborhoods, stopped cars at checkpoints set up throughout big cities, and detained scores of Afghans before sending them to overcrowded deportation centers in sweltering heat.

Officials and state media, without providing evidence, have claimed that Afghans were recruited by Israel and the United States to stage terrorist attacks, seize military sites and build drones.

Kadijah Rahimi, 26, a cattle herder, echoing many Afghans at the border crossing, said that when she was arrested in Iran last month, the security agent told her, “We know you’re working for Israel.”

Abolfazl Hajizadegan, a sociologist in Tehran, the Iranian capital, said Iran’s government was using Afghans as scapegoats to deflect blame for intelligence failures that enabled Israel to infiltrate widely within Iran.

“Mixing Afghan deportations with the Iran-Israel conflict underscores the regime’s reluctance to acknowledge its security and intelligence shortcomings,” Hajizadegan said in an interview.

Surge in hate crimes

The spying accusations have fueled racist attacks on Afghans in Iran in recent weeks, according to interviews with more two dozen Afghans living in Iran or those who have recently returned to Afghanistan, reports by aid and rights groups, and videos on social media and news media.

Afghans have been beaten or attacked with knives; faced harassment from landlords and employers who are also withholding their deposits or wages; and have been turned away from banks, bakeries, pharmacies, schools and hospitals.

Ebrahim Qaderi was riding his bicycle to work to a cardboard factory in Tehran one morning last month when two men stopped him. They shouted “Dirty Afghan” and demanded his smartphone. When Qaderi refused, they kicked him in the leg and slashed his hand with a knife, he recounted at a relocation center in Herat. His mother, Gull Dasta Fazili, said doctors at four hospitals turned him away because he was Afghan, and that they left Iran because of the attack.

Struggling to meet the need

Jawad Mosavi and nine of his family members stepped off the bus from Iran last week, scrambling under the sweltering heat of Islam Qala to gather his thoughts and the family’s dozen suitcases, rugs and rucksacks.

“Where do we even go?” he called out.

His son Ali Akbar, 13, led the way to the building where they could get their certificates of return. His half-open backpack carried his most precious belongings — a deflated soccer ball, a speaker and some headphones to listen to his favorite Iranian hits, in Persian. “The only kind of music I understand,” he said.

Like the Mosavi family, between 20,000 and 25,000 people were left to navigate a maze of luggage, tents and fellow returnees every day last week, trying to find their way through crowded buildings and warehouses run by Afghan authorities and U.N. agencies.

Mothers changed their babies’ diapers on filthy blankets amid relentless gusts of wind. Fathers queued for hours to get their fingerprints taken and collect some emergency cash under temperatures hovering over 95 degrees. Outnumbered humanitarian workers treated dehydrated returnees at a field clinic while others hastily distributed food rations or dropped off large cubes of ice in water containers.

Afghanistan was already grappling cuts in foreign aid from the United States and other donors before Iran began expelling Afghans en masse. Even before then, nearly a million Afghans had been ejected or pressed to leave from Pakistan. Organizations have been able to fund only a fifth of humanitarian needs in the country this year, and more than 400 health care centers have been shut down in recent months.

Uncertain futures, especially for girls

Afghan officials have pledged to build 35 townships across the country to cope with the influx of returnees, many of whom have been deported without being allowed to collect belongings or cash from the bank.

In Islam Qala, many Afghans said they were coming back to a country they hardly recognized since the Taliban took control and imposed strict rule in 2021.

Zahir Mosavi, the patriarch of the family, said he dreaded having to halt education for his four daughters because the Taliban have banned girls’ education above sixth grade.

“I want to keep them busy, I want them to learn something,” he said.