According to Amnesty International, Egyptian authorities have restarted illegal deportations of refugees. Among those detained and deported by Egyptian authorities are people registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

In a statement, the non-governmental organization (NGO) stated that this practice constitutes a "flagrant violation of the principle of non-refoulement" and even of Egypt's asylum law, which prohibits the return of people recognized as refugees.

Egyptian authorities have been applying these measures against refugees in recent years, but the campaign has intensified since the end of December 2025 and primarily affects citizens of Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, and other sub-Saharan African countries who are arbitrarily detained in the streets or at their workplaces.

Last January, more than one million refugees and asylum seekers were registered with UNHCR, while the Egyptian government claims there are around 10 million "guests" in the country – a term used to refer to foreigners – and denounces the burden they represent for public finances.

This situation generated panic among the refugees in Egypt who were forced to "hiding in their homes" and to minimize their movements for fear of being arrested in the street, living in a legal limbo without access to work or education, according to Amnesty International.

Although there are no official statistics, the human rights NGO documented the arbitrary detention of 22 refugees and asylum seekers between the end of December and the beginning of February of this year in four Egyptian provinces. Almost all were registered with UNHCR, and one Syrian citizen was deported.

According to Amnesty International, since the beginning of the war in Sudan in April 2023, Egyptian authorities have intensified identity checks on foreigners and detained those without documentation. Egyptian authorities dispute this version, stating that the approximately 1,5 million Sudanese who fled the conflict receive the same treatment as Egyptians.

These detentions occur while refugees or asylum seekers have appointments with the Egyptian administration to renew their residence permits, a process that often drags on for months or years due to the large number of applications and the slowness of the procedure, leaving thousands of people in a legal limbo.

People with UNHCR refugee documentation also risk being detained, despite the principle of non-removal prohibiting the sending of anyone to a location where they face a real danger of serious human rights violations. Many of these refugees have nowhere to return to, due to the destruction of their cities of origin.

Amnesty International has denounced that this wave of repression in Egypt has "devastating consequences" for families living in constant fear.

“The EU and other States must also strengthen responsibility-sharing, expand resettlement opportunities and create safe and regular pathways for people in need of international protection.”, the NGO stated.

For this reason, Amnesty International has called on the European Union (EU) – Egypt’s close partner on migration and the UNHCR’s main donor – to “Urges the Egyptian government to adopt concrete and verifiable measures to protect the rights of refugees and migrants....as well as to allow UN access to detention centers.