Pakistan has said it has repatriated more than 2.8 million Afghans since it launched a nationwide deportation campaign three years ago, a day after a US federal judge temporarily blocked plans to deport detained Afghan nationals through Pakistan. The two developments are separate, but together they show how Pakistan has become a central point in the movement of Afghans both out of its own territory and, potentially, out of the United States.

The figure was given by the Punjab Home Department on Wednesday. It said that 2,807,250 Afghan nationals have been repatriated from Pakistan to Afghanistan so far, of whom 143,474 were residing illegally in Punjab. Pakistan launched the campaign in 2023 following a surge in deadly militant attacks, including suicide bombings that Islamabad blamed partly on Afghan nationals, and it maintains that all foreign nationals must hold valid visas to remain in the country. The announcement did not address the proposed US transfers or say whether Islamabad had agreed to receive Afghans deported from the United States, according to Arab News.

The US case began with reports last week. On October 28, The New York Times reported that Washington was finalising a plan with Islamabad to return around 150 Afghan asylum seekers to Afghanistan via Pakistan. According to court documents obtained by the Associated Press, the United States planned to deport Afghan immigrants on Monday on flights from Louisiana, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) runs detention and processing facilities, to Pakistan. Advocates and lawyers said more than 80 detained Afghans had contacted them after ICE notified them they could be deported this week via Pakistan. Those affected reportedly include women, former Afghan security personnel, religious minorities and people whose relatives served alongside US forces.

On Tuesday, Judge Valerie Caproni of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that the government could not send any Afghan nationals to Afghanistan or Pakistan this week, with the order running until Saturday, according to AP. The ruling came a day after Project Rousseau, a New York non-profit that provides immigrant legal services, sued the administration, arguing that its clients could be in danger if returned to Afghanistan directly or via Pakistan. ICE Deputy Assistant Director Christopher George told the court that there were no planned or confirmed chartered or commercial flights to deport Afghan nationals to Afghanistan or Pakistan this week. AfghanEvac President Shawn VanDiver said that a week earlier there had been a plane and that on Tuesday the government told a federal judge there was not one.

The administration’s legal position is that routing Afghans through Pakistan does not make this a third-country deportation, because Pakistan would serve only as a transit route to their country of origin, according to Afghanistan International. VanDiver warned that implementing the plan could set a precedent for future deportations. The court order is temporary and does not settle the wider legal and humanitarian questions, and advocates continue to work to prevent the transfers. Human rights groups warn that Afghans returned to Afghanistan could face arbitrary detention, executions and other forms of retaliation. The Taliban authorities say they declared a general amnesty for Afghans who worked with Western-backed forces and have repeated promises that former foes can return safely, but advocates say they cannot rely on those assurances.

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Pakistan’s role remains unclear. The Taliban’s foreign ministry expressed serious concern on Monday about reports that the US planned to transfer Afghans to Pakistan. Qaiser Afridi, UNHCR spokesman in Islamabad, told Afghanistan International on November 2 that the US had not contacted the agency about deporting Afghans via Pakistan. Immigrant rights advocates have raised concerns about Pakistan’s potential role in facilitating the deportations, saying details of any arrangements between Islamabad and Washington have not been made public, according to Arab News. Neither government has publicly confirmed an agreement in the coverage reviewed.

The numbers from Pakistan’s own campaign show the scale of what the country has already done. UN figures show that millions of Afghans have returned to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan during waves of forced deportations from Pakistan and Iran. Pakistan had hosted about 1.7 million Afghans for decades, most of whom fled during the Soviet occupation, along with several hundred thousand who arrived after the Taliban took power in 2021. Its policy has drawn criticism from rights groups and UN officials, who have urged it to reconsider, and Pakistan has said it is enforcing immigration law and responding to security concerns.

Several questions follow. Has Pakistan agreed to a role in receiving Afghans from the United States, and on what terms? What safeguards, if any, would apply to people at risk of persecution? And what will happen once the court order expires on Saturday? The answers will matter for those affected, and for Pakistan’s relations with both Washington and Kabul, at a time when ties with the Taliban authorities are already strained by border clashes and accusations over militant sanctuaries.

Compiled by the Weekly PK National Desk.