Around a week ago, 67-year-old Sudanese national Mubarak Qamar Eddin died inside Shorouk Police Station. News of his death was shared by the Sudanese Community in Egypt Facebook page, which shares updates with tens of thousands of followers.
Police had detained Qamar Eddin near his home, while on his way back from a bakery nearby, according to the post. He suffered from diabetes and kidney failure. His family managed to deliver his medication to the station, and the Sudanese Embassy had started taking steps to secure his release. But after nine days in detention, he died.
Qamar Eddin was a registered refugee and carried a UNHCR card confirming his status, renewed in October. He did not, however, have a valid residency permit from the Interior Ministry’s Passports, Emigration and Nationality Administration. Instead, he held a receipt showing his next residency renewal appointment scheduled for September 2, 2027.
His case is one of thousands involving refugees in Egypt who have been subjected to arrest, detention and forced deportation at an increasing rate in recent months, regardless of their legal status, according to refugees, rights advocates and a security source speaking to Mada Masr.
“We can’t move,” says Nasr Eddin, a 50-year-old Sudanese refugee who arrived in Egypt in 2016. “People are being arrested whether they have papers or not. Many people I know have been detained. There’s a general state of terror. Some are afraid to leave their homes even to buy groceries. Police microbuses are constantly patrolling the streets.”
Ahmed, a Sudanese refugee who previously worked in community outreach with Sudanese refugees on projects run by the Center for Development Services, describes a similar case that ended in deportation. Three weeks ago, police arrested a Sudanese refugee from his workplace in the Ard al-Lewa neighborhood in Giza for not carrying identification. His family quickly brought his valid UNHCR card and proof of a scheduled residency renewal appointment. By then, however, the police station had already filed a report accusing him of failing to carry identification.
He was ill and suffered during the weeks of detention. The police station repeatedly summoned his family to bring medication before a deportation order was issued, despite his valid UNHCR card.
With his health deteriorating in custody, his family turned to an intermediary who expedited the necessary procedures at the Sudanese Embassy and the Passports, Emigration and Nationality Administration and purchased a ticket for his return to Sudan — a process that cost around LE13,000. He was later deported.
Ethiopian refugees describe similar cases to Mada Masr. Nasr, a community leader among Ethiopian refugees in Egypt, points to the case of an Ethiopian woman who has been detained at Dar al-Salam Police Station since January 20 after being stopped on her way to work. Police cited the expiration of her refugee residency permit, even though she carried a document confirming a scheduled renewal appointment, along with a valid UNHCR card.
Her husband sent an urgent appeal to UNHCR detailing the poor conditions of her detention and requesting guarantees against her forced deportation. The agency responded that it had been following the case since January 22, but she is still detained.
Last month, three Ethiopian refugees told Mada Masr that they were aware of cases in which Ethiopian refugees were detained and deported after their residency permits expired, despite holding UNHCR “blue” cards indicating formal refugee status. Some were pressured into signing deportation consent forms they did not understand due to language barriers and then deported to third countries.
UNHCR’s media office told Mada Masr that it had recently received “reports from some families of detained individuals” and that it continues to engage with the relevant authorities through official channels as part of its mandate to advocate for due process and ensure that international protection considerations are taken into account. The office stressed UNHCR’s focus on “respect for relevant fundamental principles, including the principle of non-refoulement.”
Karim Ennarah, research director at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), tells Mada Masr that since the second half of 2024, the Egyptian government has launched broad campaigns targeting refugees with arrest, detention and deportation. Over the past three weeks, he says, the pace of these operations has reached an unprecedented level, carried out under the pretext of periodic residency checks and a census of irregular migrants.
According to Ennarah, refugee protection groups received complaints about the detention of around 5,000 refugees or migrants — most of them Sudanese, but also including other African nationals and Syrians — during the final two weeks of January alone. The campaigns, he adds, have involved a sweeping targeting of refugees and foreign nationals, particularly Sudanese and other African nationals more broadly, as well as Syrians, regardless of their legal status or residency documents, as individuals holding valid residency permits and UNHCR cards were also deported.
When refugees are detained, their families typically try to contact UNHCR so the agency can mobilize its partner legal organizations to intervene. But Ennarah and Ahmed say police practices frequently obstruct access to detainees, preventing UNHCR representatives and lawyers from reaching them and effectively denying them legal representation.
“We’re talking about a systematic policy, not something that used to happen randomly in the past because a police officer didn’t know what a blue card was or knew nothing about the UNHCR,” Ennarah says.
A source at the Interior Ministry who has taken part in recent arrest campaigns against refugees confirms this account. According to the source, the Passports, Emigration and Nationality Administration periodically issues orders to carry out what is internally referred to as a “foreigners’ campaign.” These operations are typically conducted in areas with high concentrations of foreign nationals, most often in Giza and Nasr City.
The timing of the campaigns, the source says, is determined by senior officials within the administration. They may take place once or twice a month — sometimes more frequently — continuing for a period before stopping “at the leadership’s discretion.”
“I received instructions to take part in the last three campaigns,” the source says. “Everything is carried out according to directives from the administration’s leadership.”
Officers are not instructed to target a specific nationality, the source adds. Rather, anyone identified as a foreign national may be stopped and asked to present their documents. “If the papers are in order, we let them go. If they’re not, we arrest them.”
Detainees are then questioned about the status of their residency renewal and requested to pay the US$1,000 regularization fee. If they cannot pay, they are asked whether someone else can do so on their behalf. If they pay, they are temporarily released. But if residency has lapsed for an extended period, or if the individual entered the country irregularly, deportation follows.
In Egypt, an asylum seeker first submits an application at UNHCR’s office in 6th of October City. They later receive a text message with an appointment date for an interview. At that interview, applicants who present complete documentation are issued a yellow asylum-seeker card, while those lacking proof of identity receive a white certificate. After undergoing refugee status determination interviews, some are granted a blue card recognizing official refugee status.
The second part of the process involves obtaining a residency permit from the Passports, Emigration and Nationality Administration. Holders of yellow or blue cards may request an appointment and apply for residency.
These documents require renewal: yellow cards every 18 months, blue cards every three years and residency permits annually.
In practice, however, the renewal process stretches on for months. Wagdy Abdel Aziz, director of the South Center for Refugee Rights, explains that although residency permits must be renewed each year, applicants are often given appointments months later — and in some cases told to “come back next year.” During these gaps, individuals are left without valid legal status and are therefore vulnerable to arrest. Abdel Aziz attributes the delays primarily to severe staff shortages within the administration relative to the volume of applications, resulting in continual postponements.
After the outbreak of war in Sudan led to a surge in displacement to Egypt, the government issued a decree in September 2023 requiring foreign nationals to regularize their status if they have an Egyptian host and can pay fees equivalent to $1,000. In 2024, Mada Masr reported how these fees pushed many newly arrived Sudanese to seek asylum through UNHCR instead.
The surge in arrivals has placed additional strain on UNHCR’s already limited capacity, slowing both registration and document renewals. Over the past two years, the agency has also faced sharp funding cuts that disrupted many of the services it provides to refugees.
The most significant delay, however, comes from the Passports, Emigration and Nationality Administration. Until recently, the administration was conducting interviews for the issuance or renewal of residency permits for only around 600 refugees and asylum seekers per day — at a time when the number of registered refugees and asylum seekers had surpassed one million, according to UNHCR’s latest figures from January. As a result, many refugees were left waiting two to three years to renew a residency permit valid for just one year, after the government extended its duration from six months in April 2025.
In mid-December, UNHCR announced that the administration had increased the number of daily interviews to 1,000, shortening waiting periods. But the improvement has fallen short of resolving the backlog.
According to Samy al-Baqir, spokesperson for the Sudanese Teachers’ Committee based in Egypt, waiting times for residency renewal still exceed a year and a half. This means many refugees continue to spend extended periods awaiting renewal — in some cases longer than the validity of their UNHCR cards — and new residency permits may already have expired by the time they are issued.
A UN source confirms the lengthy waiting periods for residency renewal, adding that police had previously shown greater leniency toward holders of yellow and blue UNHCR cards whose residency permits had expired while they awaited renewal. Now, however, they face heightened security harassment, the source tells Mada Masr.
In Ennarah’s view, what is unfolding reflects a fundamental shift in the Egyptian government’s approach to refugees since the second half of 2024, coinciding with the arrival of large numbers of Sudanese displaced by war. Historically, he says, Egypt maintained a relatively open stance, offering a minimum level of protection, including safeguards against forced deportation. Deportations did occur, but they were exceptions.
Over the past two years, he argues, the exception has become the rule. The government has adopted a pattern of recurring security campaigns targeting neighborhoods with high concentrations of refugees in Cairo, Alexandria and other cities, including home raids and mass arrests — practices the EIPR documented in an August report.
Ennarah points to figures cited in a memorandum issued by UN special rapporteurs on January 13 on the current state of refugee rights. The memorandum, which he describes as documenting “the collapse of the refugee and migrant protection system in Egypt,” found that documented cases of refugees detained by police — whether or not they held valid residency — rose from around 250 in the first quarter of 2024 to 1,125 in the first quarter of 2025.
It also cited a 121 percent increase in arrests of individuals registered with UNHCR between January and August 2025 compared with the same period the previous year, as well as a 150 percent rise in reported deportation incidents involving registered refugees, asylum seekers and holders of registration appointment receipts year-on-year over the same period.
The memorandum warned of mounting risks facing refugees in Egypt due to “the non-recognition of UNHCR registration appointment receipts as an effective protection tool prior to full registration, the failure to obtain legal residency in a timely manner and the increased risk of arbitrary arrest and deportation.” Ennarah describes the resulting situation as one in which “you are effectively forced into illegality.”
The campaigns have not distinguished between refugees and migrants, nor between those with valid residency and those without, he says. Some refugees have been deported despite holding valid residency permits after police confiscated their documents and referred them to prosecution without papers, leading to their transfer to the passports administration or the National Security Agency, which then issued administrative deportation orders.
While there has been particular focus on pursuing and deporting Sudanese refugees, Ennarah says this has increasingly taken on the character of skin-color-based targeting.
“I’ve seen it happen myself several times at Dokki metro station,” he says. “It’s an area with a large migrant presence. If you’re standing there and see a Sudanese person, it takes less than a minute before a police officer shows up and asks for their papers. Now, without exaggeration, any Black person walking down the street in Egypt is liable to be stopped by a police officer, asked for residency documents and arrested. If they’re lucky, they might get out.”
Ennarah notes that he has received numerous reports of similar incidents involving Kenyan, Nigerian and other African migrants.
A Kenyan migrant tells Mada Masr that police confiscated her passport in mid-December after stopping her in Maadi. Officers told her they were searching for a Nigerian cleaner accused of theft.
Egypt issued its own asylum law in December 2024, formalizing the government’s assumption of responsibility for reviewing and granting asylum applications — a role that UNHCR had carried out for decades.
Yet there are still no visible signs that the new asylum system has been implemented. The law stipulates the formation of a permanent committee for refugee affairs to decide on asylum applications within three months of its issuance, as well as the adoption of implementing regulations within six months. Neither step has been completed.
Ennarah points to the positives the law promises upon its implementation, such as guaranteeing refugees the right to work, healthcare and education. But he fears that “all of this will be meaningless” under an executive policy that lacks “the fundamental pillar: the ban on expulsion and the legal protection ensuring a person is not deported back to their country of origin.”
The law also comes against the backdrop of Egypt’s strategic partnership agreement with the European Union for 2024-2027, which includes cooperation on curbing the smuggling of refugees and migrants across the Mediterranean. At the same time, official rhetoric over the past two years has emphasized Egypt’s hosting of what authorities describe as nine million “guests,” a figure the government says exceeds the country’s capacity amid economic crises. The figure refers to the total number for international migrants residing in Egypt, including refugees. Parallel online campaigns have amplified xenophobic narratives, blaming refugees for economic hardship, unemployment and crime.
Last week, Saheeh Masr pointed to an online campaign against refugees on X, coinciding with the recent escalation in deportations. According to the post, the campaign is driven by accounts that have led similar anti-refugee campaigns over the past two years.
Amid the mounting campaigns, the Sudanese and Syrian embassies in Cairo urged their nationals residing or seeking refuge in Egypt to ensure they carry valid residency and refugee documents at all times. The Syrian Embassy described the measures as “periodic inspection campaigns” on the legal status of all foreign nationals, calling them an ordinary and annually recurring procedure. Sudan’s ambassador to Cairo Emad Eddin Adawy expressed appreciation for what he described as the facilitations extended by the Egyptian government to Sudanese nationals and said he was monitoring what he called “systematic media campaigns aimed at undermining the sanctity of Sudanese-Egyptian relations.”
But rights reports and sources describe a pervasive climate of terror fueled by arrest and deportation campaigns and by the legal uncertainty surrounding residency status — a climate that has left many refugees afraid to leave their neighborhoods, even to go to work, take their children to school or buy basic necessities.
