Want to protect innocent citizens from menace of human smugglers: Pak official on nationals not being allowed to board foreign flights

Karachi, Dec 11 (PTI) A top Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) official on Thursday refuted media reports that thousands of Pakistani travellers, with valid travel documents, are not being allowed to board foreign flights from Karachi, particularly the first-time passengers from other provinces.

In recent months, the local media have carried stories about passengers being denied boarding flights at the Karachi Airport despite claiming to have valid travel documents.

In November, Geo News channel reported that passengers who are first-time travellers and belong to other provinces were not allowed to travel from Karachi’s Benazir International Airport.

FIA Director Liaquat Salman said that the agency's immigration wing had stepped up profiling and immigration checks after the Greece boat incident in which some 300 Pakistanis died while trying to cross into European countries in December 2024.

He said cases of people leaving on employment visas without proper qualifications and even complaints about passengers going to Saudi Arabia to start begging there had also led the immigration authorities to tighten profiling and checks.

“Karachi airport sees the most international air traffic, which is why there are more cases of passengers not being cleared to board flights,” he said.

“Also, we want to protect innocent citizens from the menace of human smugglers,” he added.

He noted that human smugglers misguide people to travel to a foreign country and board a ship, while others issue fake employment visas.

The Global Voices news website reported on December 2 that since early 2025, thousands of Pakistani citizens with legitimate documents have been stopped at airports by the FIA immigration officials, who, in most cases, do not even bother to stamp denied on passports.

For many travellers, it feels like an attack on their rights and dignity.

The website reported that the term “offloading” has become increasingly common in cities like Lahore, Sialkot, Islamabad and Karachi airports, and no written order is issued. No clear reason is given.

This practice has been reported for passengers from various districts in the Gujrat, Sialkot and Mandi Bahauddin regions, which are known for legal labour migration but also for organised human smuggler gangs.

Another FIA official, who declined to be named, confirmed that tighter controls also started because of pressure from the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries, which demanded action against repeated infiltration of undocumented workers and those with fake passports and visas.

Liaquat made it clear that no passenger not belonging to Sindh was stopped from travelling from Karachi Airport, but they were questioned as to why they didn’t choose their nearest point of departure.

In November, Geo News reported that 57 passengers, 22 of them with employment visas and 35 going to perform umrah but belonging to other provinces, were not allowed to board their flights at the Karachi airport.

“We suffered big losses as the airlines issued us boarding passes and we can’t get refunds now, while the immigration authorities also did not stamp offloaded on our passports,” one passenger said. PTI CORR AMS