December 11, 2025

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No Door Left Open: When Migrants and Refugees are Expelled or Denied Refuge

(AP Photo/H. Achakzai)

A growing number of states that have historically hosted large refugee populations have begun pulling up their drawbridge, tightening admission requirements, and even expelling refugees back to their home countries. Despite the pullback, the world’s migrant population has increased by 50 million over the past 10 years, with the international migrant population reaching approximately 304 million as of mid-2024, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The Danish Refugee Council warned recently that states — mostly poorer states that shelter approximately 75 percent of the world’s refugees — may begin to shut their borders, underscoring the potential for a rapidly worsening global displacement crisis. Western nations have imposed stricter policies to restrict and prevent asylum seekers, such as Denmark’s controversial law allowing the confiscation of migrants’ assets exceeding 10,000 Danish Kroner. The UK recently unveiled a new, stricter system for refugees, openly borrowing elements of Denmark’s migrant policy.

For decades, many poorer states provided refuge to large numbers of displaced persons, often despite limited resources, largely thanks to international funding. Today, however, those support flows are drying up, mainly as the shutdown of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — previously the world’s largest donor to international aid — has prompted other wealthy nations like the UK to pull back on aid as well.

Uganda is one such country that has historically been a haven for refugees fleeing the effects of conflict, famine, and poverty across Africa. In October, a senior Ugandan official announced that, “Registration of refugees from countries that are not in conflict has been closed.” While this does not limit those fleeing conflicts like the war in Sudan, it does limit those fleeing instability as a result of non-state actors, such as al-Shabaab strongholds in Somalia. According to the Wall Street Journal, Ugandan officials blame this curtailment on American aid cuts, with the new restrictions preventing 5,000 refugees from entering the country. Other African countries, such as Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kenya, are also moving to impose restrictions on the entry of refugees, citing aid cuts. These countries, including Chad, which hosts over a million refugees, of which approximately 880,000 are Sudanese, are under severe strain as aid has dried up. As a result, humanitarian organizations in these areas have been forced to search for other sources of funding or even slash life-saving services — such as nutrition and medical care — as donors reduce funding, often to reallocate toward defense or domestic priorities, like in the U.S. and UK.

In parallel to the shrinking of safe havens, some states are deploying mass-deportation strategies for migrants and refugees. This is the case in Pakistan, where one million Afghan nationals have been forced to return to Afghanistan so far in 2025. Pakistan has hosted one of the world’s largest Afghan refugee communities for decades, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. However, recent tensions between Pakistan and the current Afghan government, the Taliban, have shifted Islamabad’s view of Afghan refugees from “Islamic brethren” to a national security threat, according to the New York Times. Pakistan has accused the Taliban of sheltering and supporting Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, with recent border skirmishes igniting tensions. Pakistan’s newly appointed army chief, Asim Munir, called on the Taliban on Monday to choose between maintaining ties with Pakistan or supporting the TTP, according to the Associated Press.

As a result of the recent tensions, Pakistan has pledged to remove all Afghans from the country, regardless of their legal status or the risks they may face once back in Afghanistan. Accounts from refugees suggest an uptick in arbitrary arrests, detentions, and deportations of Afghans, according to The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Some families have left voluntarily to avoid being arrested by Pakistani authorities. Many of those forced back into Afghanistan have no homes there or have never set foot into the country in the first place, arriving in areas that may lack adequate water, shelter, food, or healthcare. Reintegration is almost impossible as Afghanistan faces its own humanitarian crisis with millions displaced, and there is significant concern for the future of the women and children who come under Taliban rule.

The combination of diminishing refuge capacity and forced returns creates a new, extremely high-risk category of displaced populations: those with “nowhere to go.” With borders closing, aid drying up, and home countries too unstable for safe return, these people are pushed into a situation that is deeply destabilizing. Without legal protection, social services, or reintegration opportunities, they have become highly vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers, criminal networks, and radicalization or indoctrination into insurgent groups that can offer basic necessities, income, or protection. In many regions, such dynamics can create fertile ground for radicalization — especially among youth — as desperation grows. These organizations have long capitalized on populations living in these grey zones. At times, these groups are the very destabilizing factors people are seeking refuge from.

From a collective security perspective, the growing number of displaced people challenges the ability of regional organizations and international coalitions to maintain stability. Unmanaged displacement can contribute to irregular cross-border mobility, arms and human trafficking, and unmonitored financial flows. It can strain peacekeeping missions, overwhelm border management systems, and exacerbate tensions between states. The erosion of asylum pathways and the collapse of humanitarian support risk transforming large refugee populations into unprotected, potentially stateless, and susceptible to violent non-state actors and criminal groups. These pressures not only heighten the likelihood of localized violence and destabilization but also generate ripple effects across regions, weakening multilateral mechanisms and collective security frameworks designed to contain these risks. As funding to the United Nations is at a 10-year low and it has halved the amount of aid money it will appeal to member states for in 2026, the severity of this crisis may only increase.