KABUL: Shabana Mahmood, UK Home Secretary, has confirmed that the United Kingdom is considering plans to return Afghan nationals whose asylum applications have been rejected back to Afghanistan.
According to The Guardian on Friday night, internal government discussions are ongoing, and if implemented, the move would mark the first such policy shift in over four years, potentially involving direct flights to Kabul.
Mahmood said the government is closely monitoring developments and coordinating with European partners to reach agreements on the return of migrants without legal status.
The development comes as the European Union prepares to host a delegation from the Islamic Emirate in Brussels to discuss mechanisms for deporting Afghan migrants whose asylum claims have been rejected.
Reports indicate that in 2025, Afghan nationals made up the largest group of irregular migrants arriving in the UK via the English Channel, totaling 3,360 people an 18% increase compared to the previous year.
At the same time, the UK\u2019s asylum approval rate has dropped sharply from 99% in 2023 to 38% in the first half of 2025, reflecting a significant tightening of immigration policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KABUL: Shabana Mahmood, UK Home Secretary, has confirmed that the United Kingdom is considering plans to return Afghan nationals whose asylum applications have been rejected back to Afghanistan.According to The Guardian on Friday night, internal government discussions are ongoing, and if implemented, the move would mark the first such policy shift in over four years, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[85],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20470"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20472,"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20470\/revisions\/20472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/omidradio.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}