Sami Agha, a Syrian refugee who has lived in Egypt for more than a decade, was shocked when security officers raided Syrian-owned shops in Cairo’s First Settlement the previous Wednesday. His wedding and evening-dress sales and rental shop was among them. Officers detained his visually impaired brother, who works with him, and three other Syrian employees.
Agha says the detainees were registered with UNHCR and held its yellow asylum-seeker cards, except one worker who had recently cancelled his registration in preparation for voluntary return to Syria after closing his file and obtaining an Egyptian exit permit.
UNHCR’s registration information.
His brother’s card expired in April 2025. He sought renewal but his UNHCR appointment was scheduled for 26 January 2026 because of heavy demand. Agha says the pending appointment did not prevent his detention alongside colleagues and another 23 Syrian workers in the area. They appeared before prosecutors the next day without lawyers, then were transferred on Friday to the Passports, Immigration and Nationality administration in Abbassia.
“Security will not let us contact our detained relatives,” Agha tells Zawia3. “An officer told us to go back to our country. We contacted UNHCR without a response. We do not know what will happen to my brother and his colleagues and fear deportation, although they have families and children in Egypt.”
Another Syrian resident, Mohamed Adib, says his nephew was detained in Al-Salam First district because his residence permit had expired. He was registered with UNHCR and had a yellow card, but was not carrying it and had been unable to obtain a residence-renewal appointment.
The family rushed his passport, asylum card and expired residence card to the police station to establish that he had entered lawfully and was awaiting an appointment.
Adib says his nephew’s residence permission expired in 2023, while his last physical card dated to 2022. Administrative complications and delayed appointments have left many refugees unable to renew, he argues, rather than deliberately evading the law. He asks whether verification will lead to release or deportation, saying hundreds of families face the same uncertainty and unanswered attempts to contact UNHCR.
Amer Ibrahim says he followed the official process and received a renewal appointment after a three-year wait, believing compliance offered some protection. That confidence collapsed when officers stopped him in the street in early January.
“They stopped me and I remained detained for about ten days,” he tells Zawia3, describing humiliation. His father, in his sixties, was also detained at work despite holding a valid passport and a renewal appointment. The experiences destroyed the family’s sense of safety after more than a decade in Egypt.
“Everyone is afraid. Nobody dares leave home or even return to it,” Ibrahim says. In his experience, most arrests concern expired residence documents; many people are not deported but endure intimidating detention with lasting effects. He calls for serious intervention by UNHCR and the Syrian embassy.
Nesrine al-Qazzaz says repeated calls to regularise status do not match daily experience. Obtaining or renewing registration can take one or two years, while pending appointments are not effectively recognised. She says arrests sometimes affect people holding valid papers as well as those without them.
Since October, she has waited for the registration confirmation needed for residence renewal. She then spent more than fifteen days awaiting security approval. “We have always respected the host country and its laws, but we need clear, workable rules so we can comply and live lawfully,” she tells Zawia3.
She recalls seeing a broad arrest operation in a Cairo neighbourhood that included a Syrian woman in her twenties carrying an infant. “They took her. I do not know whether she had other children at home or was going out to buy food or medicine.”
Syrian community witnesses tell Zawia3 that a major operation on 8 January detained young people in shops and factories, especially in 10th of Ramadan City, over expired permits or failure to carry residence papers or yellow cards.
They describe operations in 6 October, Badr, Madinaty, Gesr al-Suez, Obour, Shorouk, First Settlement, Nasr City and central Cairo, as well as Damietta, Nakheel Beach and Alexandria’s Asafra district. Arrests were also reported in Hurghada’s Kawther and tourist-centre areas, though witnesses described the intensity there as lower than in Greater Cairo.
The community remains tense and fearful as operations continue across an expanding geographical area without clear criteria or detention periods, the witnesses say.
Policies without public announcement
The report traces policy changes to August 2024, when Egypt removed Syrians’ visa-fee exemption and introduced a US$25 charge, including for holders of Egyptian or European residence permits. New tourist-residence renewal conditions encouraged Syrians to seek asylum registration or investment residence, while visa brokers and irregular migration routes through Libya expanded.
On 14 December 2024, exceptions for Syrians holding residence in the United States, Schengen countries, Britain or Canada were reportedly removed, requiring prior security permission. Applied immediately without public announcement, the change led to refusals at airports. Al Arabiya, citing unnamed sources, also reported a mid-December instruction suspending renewal pending security approval.
Saheeh Masr reported intermediary charges of approximately US$1,150–2,300 or more for security approval through travel companies and brokers. These are reported brokerage costs, not a published uniform government fee.
On 29 December 2024, civil-aviation instructions reportedly prohibited airlines from accepting Syrian passengers except holders of temporary non-tourist residence visas, with administrative penalties for non-compliant carriers.
Reported civil-aviation instructions.
Rights organisations describe successive unofficial security instructions since 2014. The Refugees Platform in Egypt reported an internal instruction following the Assad government’s fall on 8 December 2024 to deport Syrians stopped for any reason regardless of their status.
Refugees Platform report and legal memorandum.
A further reported measure removed entry exceptions except for spouses of Egyptians whose marriages were officially documented before 7 December 2024. Syrians previously authorised to enter were reportedly given one non-renewable month rather than three months of residence.
The report also describes penalties imposed since 2017 for late residence renewal: approximately EGP 1,700 for the first three months and EGP 500 for each additional month, plus EGP 5,000 for each year of delay in first obtaining a residence card. These describe the reported policies and costs at the relevant periods, not a current fee schedule.
UNHCR’s registered Syrian refugee population in Egypt stood at approximately 139,000 as of 31 March 2025, according to the figure cited in the report.
Asylum and administrative limbo
Noor Khalil, director of the Refugees Platform in Egypt, describes a nationwide security campaign directed from above. He says 2024 brought major changes to Syrians’ entry and residence policies, particularly after Assad’s fall, as examined in the platform’s research.
He says tourist residence issuance and renewal effectively stopped, while asylum-related renewal appointments sometimes extended to 2029 despite permits requiring renewal every six months.
The state’s administrative decisions have left thousands without current documents and then exposed them to punishment, he argues. Awaiting an official appointment should not be treated as a criminal act. He says prosecutors often order release, yet people return to police stations and remain held, sometimes facing removal without clear procedures.
The latest operation has not distinguished between refugees, asylum seekers and holders of investment, study or marriage residence, Khalil says. He describes valid five-year marriage permits and investors in the process of changing residence category among the cases. In his assessment, the targeting is nationality-based rather than a general operation against foreign nationals.
Authorities commonly cite pressure on the passports administration, he says, but have not issued temporary documents protecting people from detention and allowing access to services while they wait.
The resulting fear discourages some Syrians from attending renewal appointments because they anticipate refusal or a removal stamp. Costs weigh especially heavily on families. Voluntary-return procedures also require closing asylum files and obtaining multiple approvals, creating further delays and expense.
Khalil condemns politicising asylum, whether to pressure people to return or use them as political leverage. Some can return, but others come from areas still affected by conflict or destroyed infrastructure and have no safe option.
Detention also separates Egyptian families because of marriages between Syrians and Egyptians. Arresting a parent can leave Egyptian children without care, he says.
He adds that the platform observed a sharp rise in anti-Syrian hate speech over the preceding two weeks, led by organised accounts and coinciding with security operations. He sees a relationship between online incitement and arrests.
Legal protections and disputed practices
Human-rights lawyer and Refugees Platform consultant Halim Henish says yellow-card asylum seekers benefit from protections under the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1969 Organisation of African Unity Convention. He considers the arrests and deportations described incompatible with those protections.
He also cites Egypt’s agreement with the United Nations governing UNHCR services and Foreigners’ Asylum Law No. 164 of 2024 as safeguards against unlawful removal of refugees and asylum seekers.
1951 Refugee Convention. Egypt’s 2024 asylum law.
Henish says removal is limited to specified circumstances involving public security or terrorism. Failure to renew an asylum document, in his view, is an administrative matter rather than justification for arrest or detention.
He calls arrests over expired permits unlawful and argues they can pressure refugees to leave under the label of voluntary return even when surrounding circumstances make departure coercive in practice.
He criticises UNHCR’s response as insufficient and calls for public, effective engagement with the government and announced meetings addressing the reported violations.
Amnesty International’s Egypt and Libya researcher Mahmoud Shalaby says such campaigns are not new. Amnesty documented large-scale arrests of Black migrants in Cairo and Giza in 2023–2024, describing discriminatory racial targeting. Reports concerning Syrians indicate an expansion, he says.
Shalaby describes arbitrary detention without prosecutorial review before deportation and denial of opportunities to challenge detention or removal in court. Even where prosecutors order release, police sometimes continue holding people for deportation, he says.
“The most serious violation is breaching non-refoulement by returning Syrians without individual risk assessment,” he tells Zawia3, noting continuing instability and risks that vary according to individual identity and affiliations.
Arresting holders of UNHCR documents is particularly serious, he argues, revealing inadequate protection and disregard for Egypt’s commitments under the Refugee Convention and its protocol.
He calls for an immediate halt to campaigns based solely on immigration status and proportionate administrative handling of residence violations without detention or deportation.
The principle of non-refoulement
Karim Ennarah, EIPR’s research director, describes a severe crisis in protection since late 2024. For decades, Egypt’s arrangement with UNHCR supported status determination and residence processes intended to prevent return to danger. He says that foundation has been gravely undermined.
Protection organisations and EIPR have documented operations against registered and unregistered people and those with and without residence papers, previously with a marked focus on Black migrants, Ennarah says.
He cites a communication by UN special rapporteurs dated 13 January 2026 raising concerns about deteriorating protection, based on rights-group documentation and UNHCR information.
According to Ennarah’s account of the communication, residence waiting periods exceeded 1,000 days, approximately 1,120 migrants and refugees were detained in the first quarter of 2025 compared with a previous average of 250, and deportations of documented refugees increased by 150%. These figures reflect the cited monitoring, not an official comprehensive census.
He warns that removing people despite valid documentation breaches protection obligations and represents a significant change in Egypt’s recent treatment of refugees, potentially extending to other nationalities.
The UN experts’ communication described concerns about systematic deportation, arbitrary detention and possible violations of non-refoulement. It followed earlier warnings in a 17 December 2024 letter and highlighted risks including trafficking and exploitation, particularly affecting women and children. It requested immediate interim measures and accountability where violations were established.
EIPR’s publication of the UN experts’ communication.
Syrian refugees are left between shifting, poorly publicised policies and administrative or security practices that do not clearly distinguish those awaiting official procedures from those breaching rules. As operations expand and entry and residence rules remain opaque, fear deepens in a community for whom Egypt had long offered relative refuge from war.
