Amnesty International has accused Egyptian authorities of carrying out a campaign of “arbitrarily detaining and unlawfully deporting” refugees and asylum seekers in recent weeks, saying the measures were taken solely because of their “irregular” status, in violation of the international law principle of non-refoulement and Egypt’s own asylum law.
Amnesty documented the arrest of 22 refugees and asylum seekers between late December and Feb. 5 in Cairo, Giza, Qalyoubia, and Alexandria, including a child and two women. Fifteen of them are registered with the UN refugee agency.
In a statement issued on Monday and reviewed by Al Manassa, the organization said police have stepped up stops of foreign nationals since late December.
“Police officers in plain clothes have been arbitrarily rounding up nationals of Syria, Sudan, South Sudan and other sub-Saharan countries from the streets or their workplaces in cities across the country following identity checks. Those found without valid residency permits were driven away in unmarked vans, even when they were able to produce UNHCR cards,” the statement said.
According to two Syrian rights advocates who spoke to Al Manassa last week, the Interior Ministry has intensified recent campaigns to stop and detain Syrians without residency permits through inspections at checkpoints and on streets. The government has for more than a year tightened requirements for renewing or issuing residency permits.
One asylum seeker, a Syrian, has already been deported, while 21 others remain at risk of deportation, despite prosecutors ordering the release of 19 of them pending investigations related to residency, the statement said.
Mahmoud Shalaby, Amnesty International’s Egypt and Libya researcher, said refugees who have fled war, persecution, or humanitarian crises “should not be forced to live in daily fear of being arbitrarily arrested and deported back to a place where they are at risk of grave human rights violations.”
Forced deportations in these cases are not only a flagrant violation of international law, but also breach Egyptian law, which bars returning recognized refugees to their home countries, Shalaby said.
International law prohibits any state from returning a refugee to countries or territories where their life or freedom would be threatened, while Article 13 of Law No. 164 of 2024 bans turning back refugees or forcibly returning them to the state of their nationality or their country of habitual residence.
Amnesty’s statement also described what it called the campaign’s “devastating impact” on families, saying some families have kept their children at home for fear of being stopped or arrested, while others lost their income after a breadwinner was detained.
It added that some of those arrested had scheduled appointments to renew residency permits at the Passports, Immigration, and Nationality Authority, but long delays that can stretch for years left them vulnerable during inspection campaigns.
Amnesty cited the case of a Syrian asylum seeker who said he was stopped and detained days before his residency renewal appointment. A release order was later issued, but deportation procedures continued, and his family was forced to buy him a ticket to Syria before he was deported.
The Egyptian government does not publish official figures on deportations, Amnesty said. The statement put the number of refugees and asylum seekers registered with UNHCR in Egypt at 1,099,024 as of January 2026.
On Jan. 31, Sudan’s ambassador in Cairo, Emad El-Din Adawi, said at a news conference that 207 Sudanese nationals were returned from Egypt in December 2025 and another 371 in January, without clarifying whether these were deportations carried out by security forces or whether individuals were compelled to return through programs coordinated by the Sudanese embassy and Egyptian authorities to avoid indefinite detention or the risk of arrest.
He added that about 400 Sudanese nationals are currently detained in Egypt, without giving reasons.
Amnesty called on Egyptian authorities to immediately release all those held solely over their migration or asylum status and to halt the deportation of anyone entitled to international protection. It also urged the European Union, as a key partner of Egypt on migration and a major funder of UNHCR, to press for respect for refugees’ rights and to expand resettlement opportunities.
Amnesty was not the only group to report the security campaign against refugees. In a report published in early February, the Refugees Platform in Egypt said it had recorded an unprecedented escalation in official policies and practices toward refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants between late December 2025 and the end of January 2026. The Interior Ministry, by contrast, denied taking any new measures related to Syrians’ entry into the country.
After the passage of the asylum law in 2024, the government issued a series of decisions linked to canceling or suspending renewals of tourist residencies, including tighter residency requirements tied to limited pathways such as registration with the UN refugee agency, study, or investment.
That has pushed tens of thousands of Syrians into a crisis, forcing them to wait up to two years on a long list to obtain residency or secure an appointment at the passports authority, according to a joint statement by 10 rights groups last month.
