The commander of border guards in Iran\u2019s northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi said forces detained 145,520 Afghan citizens in the first seven months of the current year while they were trying to enter the country illegally. He said the individuals were handed over to Afghan authorities and returned after legal procedures were completed.<\/p>\n
Majid Shoja, the commander of Khorasan Razavi\u2019s border guards, said at a news conference that 39,311 Afghan citizens had been detained at the province\u2019s borders in the first half of last year. He described the increase in illegal crossings as 4.5 times higher.<\/p>\n
Shoja said that despite residency restrictions and stricter border controls, some Afghan citizens continue to use illegal routes to enter Iran because of economic difficulties and a lack of job opportunities in their country. Media reports also indicate that some of the returned migrants, due to poverty and unemployment, try again to cross the border.<\/p>\n
According to the commander of Khorasan Razavi border guards, 240,000 foreign citizens have entered the province through land and air borders since the start of the year, more than 200,000 of them Afghan citizens who entered Iran with visas. He urged Afghan citizens to use official border crossings to enter Iran.<\/p>\n
Shoja also said that since the start of the year, one and a half tonnes of narcotics and 110 hunting and military weapons have been seized at the Khorasan Razavi borders, adding that the figure is twice that of the same period last year. He also reported a 26% increase in fuel smuggling seizures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran says border guards detained 145,520 Afghans trying to enter illegally in seven months, with drug and arms seizures also rising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-migrant-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}