PAKISTAN is setting up deportation centres for migrants labelled “illegal,” including an estimated 1.7 million Afghans, officials said today. 

Anyone found staying in the country without the proper registration documents from next Wednesday will be arrested and sent to the deportation centres.

Three deportation centres are being set up in Baluchistan, said Jan Achakzai, a spokesman for the government of the south-western province. One will be in Quetta, the provincial capital.

Another three will be established in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in the north-west, said its caretaker chief minister Azam Khan. More than 60,000 Afghans have returned home since the crackdown was announced, he said.

Pakistan’s caretaker Interior Minister Sarfraz Bugti has warned that there will be no extension of the deadline.

The government denies targeting Afghans and says the focus is on people who are in the country illegally, regardless of their nationality, but there has been widespread condemnation of the crackdown.

Last week, a group of former US diplomats and representatives of resettlement organisations urged Pakistan not to deport Afghans who are waiting for US visas under a programme that relocates at-risk refugees fleeing Taliban rule.

The United Nations issued a similar appeal, warning that the crackdown could lead to the separation of families and other human rights violations.