Deported to the Taliban: the Afghan refugees Europe is sending back

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Deported to the Taliban: the Afghan refugees Europe is sending back

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Poland deported three Afghan refugees in defiance of a European Court of Human Rights order. Germany and Austria have followed suit. Now the EU is quietly opening talks with the Taliban on returns. The people caught in between are asking a simple question: safe to return for whom?

Published on 8 June 2026

By Lola García-Ajofrín - El Confidencial (Madrid)

Translated by Albie Mills

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On 10 April, the Polish government organised the deportation of nine Afghan citizens to Afghanistan, despite the European Court of Human Rights having issued interim measures prior to their flight. Their lawyers managed to file an application in Strasbourg to halt the deportation. Six did not travel, but three were deported despite the Court’s decision. They departed on a military aircraft from Kraków to Tashkent, in Uzbekistan, and from there on to Kabul. They were accompanied by 15 Polish border guards, a doctor, eight members of the air force and an independent observer.

"None of them had a criminal record in Poland, although the government is trying to claim that we are deporting criminals,” Polish lawyer Tomasz Sieniow, President of the Rule of Law Institute Foundation, and the observer on the flight, told El Confidencial by telephone. “They were simply refugees who were not recognised as such,” Sieniow stated.

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Since March 2025, Poland has suspended the right to seek asylum for refugees arriving in the country via its border with Belarus. Afghans are one of the largest groups – second only to Syrians and Somalis – arriving at the Polish-Belarusian border, having crossed the Białowieża Forest. Some 1,400 Afghans did so between June 2022 and December 2026, according to the We Are Monitoring Association. They arrive “terrified, having gone without food for several days, some without shoes,” describes one of the foundation’s activists.

Frontex did not participate in the deportation of the three Afghans from Poland, “because it is illegal”, continues Sieniow, explaining that this is why the Polish government used a military aircraft. For their safety, he cannot give details of their backgrounds, but “they were three ordinary people”, he insists. “The most absurd thing is that they had been detained for seven or eight months without any proceedings taking place, because that would probably have constituted a violation of the European Convention”, he adds. Moreover, it would have been “very costly”.

A Frontex spokesperson told El Confidencial that the agency “resumed supporting member states' voluntary return operations to Afghanistan in November 2025”. According to Frontex data, "between then and the end of May, 52 people were returned voluntarily to Afghanistan with Frontex support."

The spokesperson also explained that “Frontex does not support forced returns to Afghanistan: Any voluntary returns we support are based on genuine and informed consent, with individuals receiving clear information about the situation on the ground.”

The Brussels meeting

Months earlier, on 30 August 2024, Germany deported 28 Afghans with criminal records and a further 81 Afghans on 18 July 2025, whilst Austria deported an Afghan man convicted of a crime on 21 October 2025, according to the European Asylum Agency. The EU is following suit.

Although no EU country recognises the Taliban government, the EU has maintained a minimal presence in Kabul since 2022, and after weeks of secrecy, on 12 May, a spokesperson for the European Commission confirmed in a briefing with journalists that, in coordination with the Swedish Ministry of Justice, they had sent a letter to the “de facto government of Afghanistan”, enquiring about the possibility of a meeting in Brussels.

‘Leaving Afghanistan was one of the hardest decisions of my life; I had to leave behind my parents, my siblings, my colleagues and everything I knew’ – Shafi Karimi

The Commission spokesperson admitted that this meeting would “follow-up a previous meeting”, which took place in January in Afghanistan, and in response to an initiative presented in October 2025 by 20 member states and Schengen area countries, which asked the Commission to coordinate these meetings to deport individuals who “pose a threat to security”.

The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), together with more than 80 other organisations, has sent a letter to EU members warning that "the Taliban do not represent the people of Afghanistan, as they lack internal democratic legitimacy” and highlighting “arbitrary detentions, disappearances, executions, torture and reprisals” that are taking place in the...