More than 21,900 Pakistanis boarded return flights from Gulf Cooperation Council countries in just over four months, their circumstances ranging from visa violations to activities Gulf authorities classified as security threats.
The scale of the removals came to light through data presented in Pakistan’s National Assembly and compiled by the country’s Narcotics Control Ministry. Between March 1 and July 13, 2026, a total of 21,951 Pakistani nationals were sent back from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. For the millions of Pakistanis whose livelihoods depend on Gulf employment, the figures lay bare how quickly that presence can be severed.
Additional reference context is available at https://organiser.org/2026/08/24/376773/world/west-asia-20000-pakistanis-deported-gulf-countries-flag-illegal-entry-drug-trafficking-national-security-threat/.
Saudi Arabia accounted for the largest share, deporting 15,500 Pakistani nationals during the period. The UAE followed with 3,803 deportations. Oman recorded 1,606 cases, while Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait deported 521, 429 and 97 Pakistanis respectively. Gulf authorities cited illegal entry, visa violations, criminal offences, begging, drug trafficking and other activities as grounds for removal, framing many cases as national security matters.
The breakdown of categories tells a more complicated story. Nearly 4,628 of those deported were classified as absconders, people who had disappeared from their employers or sponsors. Another 1,294 had served jail sentences before being sent home. A further 968 were blacklisted on security grounds. The data also recorded 472 deportations specifically linked to begging, and nine Pakistani nationals were removed from the UAE through Interpol channels.
Other categories included 1,155 cases involving lost passports, 689 deportations over visa violations and 342 individuals refused entry at the border. The largest single category, though, remained opaque. The ministry recorded 6,662 deportations classified simply as “Others,” with no detailed breakdown of the underlying offences or circumstances.
Enforcement patterns varied sharply across the six states. Saudi Arabia deported 3,921 absconders compared with 636 from the UAE, and led on visa-related removals with 1,924 cases against the UAE’s 347 and Oman’s 295. Those differences reflect both the relative size of Pakistani communities in each country and divergent enforcement priorities.
Meanwhile, a separate thread ran through the deportation data, one tied directly to the broader Iran-US regional conflict. Gulf authorities increased scrutiny of individuals who filmed, uploaded, published or shared videos documenting Iranian attacks on their cities, treating the spread of such material as a security concern in its own right.
In March, Bahrain announced the arrest of six people, including five Pakistani nationals, for filming, publishing and reposting videos showing the impact of Iranian strikes in the kingdom. The arrests made plain that for some deportees, the path to removal began not with an immigration violation but with a phone and a social media account.
The four-month window captured in the ministry’s data is a snapshot, not a complete picture. Remittances from Gulf workers remain a vital artery for Pakistani households back home, which makes the vulnerability exposed by these figures all the more consequential. The question of how Pakistan and the Gulf states manage the terms of that relationship, and what protections, if any, exist for workers caught in enforcement sweeps, remains unresolved.