More than 129,000 illegal immigrants have returned to Afghanistan from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the month since the government set the November 1 deadline for 1.7 million undocumented people to leave the country or face expulsion, official documents showed on Thursday.

As many as 128,629 have crossed Torkham and 589 have travelled through Angoor Ada, the two border gates between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the data shows.

The northwestern border crossing was flooded with thousands of people looking to cross into Afghanistan, a day after the deadline expired for undocumented foreigners to leave or face expulsion.

On Friday, the crackdown on illegal immigrants got under way. According to Home Department’s Additional Secretary Irfanullah Mehsud, the government has obtained information of over 52,000 undocumented migrants.

Pakistan, which is now under the rule of the interim government, has set up holding centres at borders where people are sent back after National Database and Registration Authority registration, checking, and an exit stamp from the Federal Investigation Agency.

There were no reports of any arrests by the KP police.

Meanwhile, announcements were made for illegal immigrants in Peshawar mosques. They advised undocumented people to voluntarily leave as the government was set to launch a crackdown on them after the deadline.

Earlier in the day, caretaker Interior Minister Sarfaraz Bugti told Afghan Chargé d’affaires Ahmed Shakeeb that the return of refugees would continue as planned and authorities have been told to behave “respectfully” towards the returning refugees.

But human rights activist Fatima Atif told Aaj News on Wednesday that Afghan refugees were being sent back to their country forcefully as police were raiding their homes and arresting them.

Authorities on the Afghan side of the border have been overwhelmed by the scale of the exodus as they attempt to process those returning – some of whom are setting foot in Afghanistan for the first time in their lives.

“We are constantly in contact with them (Pakistani authorities) asking for more time. People must be allowed to return with dignity,” the Taliban government’s refugees minister Khalil Haqqani told AFP.

“They should not give Afghans a hard time, they should not make more enemies,” he said at a temporary processing centre, which opened overnight Wednesday.

Many fled during the decades of conflict that Afghanistan suffered since the late 1970s, while the Taliban takeover after the US withdrawal in 2021 led to another exodus.

Aid agencies warned that the mass movement of people could tip Afghanistan into yet another crisis and expressed “grave concerns” about the survival and reintegration of the returnees, particularly with the onset of winter.

International humanitarian funding for the country dried up after the Taliban took over and imposed restrictions on women.

(With input from AFP and Reuters)