Riazat Butt and Adil Jawad
Born and raised in Pakistan to parents who fled neighboring Afghanistan half a century ago, an 18-year-old found himself at the mercy of police in Karachi who took his cash, phone, and motorbike, and sent him to a deportation center.
Scared and bewildered, he spent three days there before he was sent back to Afghanistan, a place he has never been to, with nothing but clothes on his back.
The youth is one of at least 1.7 million Afghans who made Pakistan their home as their country sank deeper into decades of war. But they’ve been living there without legal permission, and are now the target of a harsh crackdown on migrants who Pakistan says must leave.
Some 600,000 Afghans have returned home since last October, when the crackdown began, meaning at least a million remain in Pakistan in hiding. They’ve retreated from public view, abandoning their jobs and rarely leaving their neighborhoods out of fear they could be next for deportation.
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