ISLAMABAD: The Federal Inves­tigation Agency (FIA) offloaded 39,786 passengers in 2025 under a “lawful, intelligence-driven and risk-based system” to curb “irregular migration” and “human smuggling”, a top official said on Sunday.

Speaking to a select group of journalists, Additional Director General Immigration Nouman Siddiqui said passenger offloading, often criticised publicly, was primarily a preventive step aimed at saving lives, protecting citizens from exploitation abroad and safeguarding Pakistan’s international image.

“Offloading decisions are not arbitrary,” he asserted. “They are based on immigration concerns, suspicious travel patterns, document verification, destination-country requirements and established standard operating procedures,” he added.

The primary objective, he said, was “the protection of human life and prevention of exploitation at the hands of human traffickers”.

Apparently, the agency is attempting to clean up its public image following the backlash it faced over “arbitrarily” offloading passengers.

According to a report recently submitted to the Senate, the FIA penalised 85 of its immigration officers for misuse of authority in the past year.

It added that the agency offloaded at least 132 passengers from their scheduled flights at various airports across the country during this period.

A National Assembly standing committee was told in December that at least 51,000 passengers were offloaded at airports in 2025 after failing immigration checks, with a large number of them being offloaded at Lahore and Karachi airports.

Mr Siddiqui said the crackdown followed multiple tragedies linked to illegal migration routes. Over the past three years, around 460 Pakistanis have fallen victim to such incidents, with at least 377 reported deaths.

In many cases, passengers were found travelling through suspicious routes, fake overseas employment schemes, forged documents, fraudulent sponsorships or high-risk transit patterns linked to organised smuggling and trafficking networks, he added.

Mr Siddiqui said offloaded passengers fell into two categories: those offloaded by the FIA on immigration or risk grounds, and those not offloaded by the agency, including cases involving airline issues, technical faults, flight cancellations, bad weather, self-offloading, seasonal border closures or requests from other departments.

Besides the 39,786 passengers offloaded by the FIA in 2025, another 34,688 were offloaded for other reasons. These included airline-related disruptions and arrests required by Customs, the Anti-Narcotics Force, the Airport Security Force and police.

A joint working group comprising the FIA, the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment, and the Ministry of Overseas Pakistanis has also been formed.

Published in Dawn, June 1st, 2026