GUJRAT: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) headquarter has issued a directive for an enhanced scrutiny of travel documents of the passengers belonging to at least nine districts of Punjab mostly the Gujranwala and Gujrat regions to prevent the potential illegal immigrants or human trafficking.

The directive also includes the identification of at least 15 countries that have been used as a transit destination of the illegal immigrants for their further travel towards the European countries.

The directive has been issued by the FIA to its all immigration counters at the airports and borders of Pakistan.

According to the FIA directive, the immigration border management system (IBMS) data analysis of the last six months (July-December 2024) revealed the trend of passengers traveling to at least 15 countries including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Senegal, Ethiopia, Mauritania, Turkey, Qatar, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan and Kenya.

Enhanced scrutiny ordered for travellers from nine districts of Punjab and AJK; 17 passengers offloaded from 10 flights

The passengers traveling to these countries on the visa categories of visit, tourist, Umrah and student and the risk management system of FIA have identified these countries as a transit base of illegal immigrants for the travel towards Europe through illegal means.

Moreover, the data analysis has also shown that most of the passengers traveling to these transit destinations are mainly from nine districts of Punjab that include Gujranwala, Gujrat, Mandi Bahauddin, Hafizabad, Sialkot, Jhelum, Sheikhupura, Toba Tek Singh and Bhimbher district of Azad Jammu and Kashmir region.

The immigration authorities have been directed to implement enhanced profiling measures of the passengers traveling towards the aforementioned destinations keeping in view the identified demographic profile whereas verification of travel documents such as visa, return air tickets and hotel booking.

The interviews of suspicious passengers by ascertained the purpose of visit, financial means of travel and the record of such passengers should also be maintained, the directive concluded.

The director immigration of FIA said in the directive that such measures were being taken to curb the menace of illegal human trafficking rising the lives of Pakistanis.

It is learnt that the ministry of interior have been working on propsing the permanent rules for the passengers traveling abroad as currently adopted standard operation procedures SOPs by the Immigration authorities at the airports and borders may take a shape of formal rules aimed at curbing the illegal human trafficking from Pakistan.

Due to the stricter scrutiny and SOPs implementation at the international airports of Pakistan, the genuine passengers mostly the businessmen and umrah pilgrims traveling with legal documents and visit visas of Europe and some middle Eastern countries, have been facing severe hardships.

A senior FIA official said such a strict scrutiny of passengers at the airports might last for another four to six months until the country could not formulate the rules and legal framework for the foreign visitors.

OFFLOADED: Seventeen passengers were offloaded from 10 foreign flights at the Sialkot International Airport during the last 24 hours whereas an illegal immigrant was detained on his arrival after a failed attempt to travel to Greece from Saudi Arabia.

Sources in the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) identified the passengers as Muhammad Alber Mir, Muhammad Zainul Abidin, Asif James, John Ibrahim, Ali Raza, Muhammad Arslan, Shahzad Ali, Qamar Bano, Abdul Rehman, Sobia, Shoaib Ali, Atif Hameed, Harrison, Sharoon Masih, Muhammad Shahbaz and Muhammad Awais.

During immigration clearance, a passenger, Saqlain Abbas, resident of Sialkot, arrived from Saudi Arabia. He disclosed that he wanted to travel to Greece and his relative Irfan Yousaf had engaged an agent for Rs3m. The agent sent him on an Umrah visa to KSA but failed to send him to Greece. Irfan was also arrested from the airport’s parking lot and both were sent to the FIA anti-human trafficking cell.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2025