Pakistan Catches Thousands of Smugglers every year. Thousands of individuals are arrested by the Pakistani government while trying to make it to the West via illegal routes and hundreds of cases have been lodged against the smugglers who aid them. However, in almost all of these instances it is not a conviction that occurs. Around 50% of the cases of trafficking and smuggling reported to the Anti-Human Trafficking Circles (AHTC) of Pakistan were convicted in 2023. One year later, this figure has fallen below three percent. By the first half of 2025, it had only dropped down to almost 1 percent.
It’s not that people do not try to enforce. It’s a tale of what happens to that effort when it gets to court.
But the crisis has been a great deal larger than the headlines, however: Pakistan is suddenly emerging as an irregular migration source country to Europe. As recently as 2021, it did not even make it onto the list of the top ten countries with the most irregular arrivals to the European shores. By mid-2023, it had become fifth place and maybe even the tragedy that ensued could not have been ignored any longer: in June 2023, the fishing trawler Adriana sank off the coast of Pylos, Greece, killing more than 350 Pakistani nationals who had paid smugglers to take them to Italy. It is definitely devaluing the Green Passport.
Enforcement Data of Federal Investigation Agency
Research that leverages Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) enforcement data from 2022-2025 provides some insight into the lack of sustained reduction in irregular departures in the wake of disaster events, such as the sinking of the Adriana. Over 5,500 irregular migrants were intercepted by the FIA and other agencies in 2024 through joint task force operations. Despite offloading at the airports and land borders, the deportations to Pakistan have been significantly high with more than 60,000 deported over a year. There’s interception and then there’s enforcement. It appears that the system is completely failing in the second half of the “war on drugs” prosecution that is carried out in court.
The border is not the real problem, the bottleneck is.
Migrants, Smugglers and FIA
The research is simulating a decision-making process of three parties: migrants who attempt to cross illegally, smugglers who want to make the crossing, and the FIA who want to enforce the crossing. What comes out is a mathematical explanation for what many migration policy watchers have long intuited – that crackdowns can be effective, but for a limited time.
Then the smugglers reduce their attempts and irregular attempts, as the pressure mounts. However, it’s an expensive process to keep up and, over time, the state lets go. Smugglers return to the market; migrants try again and so on. The description of this in the model is a system that oscillates around an equilibrium point but does not come to a halt – not quite like a course that is corrected – more like a pendulum.
Important, the analysis finds, is that there are bigger knock-on effects for the entire system if there is a disruption to the smuggling networks, rather than a punishment to individual migrants. Migrant behavior shifts when smugglers are squeezed by enforcement — but if migrants themselves are removed from the system without disrupting the smuggling networks that serve them, those networks simply continue operating as before. The lack of genuine punishment for convicted trafficking offenders, paired with an almost uniformly low conviction rate for trafficking and smuggling offences, is the main cause of this imbalance.
Economics Underneath the Crossings
The estimated income of a migrant in Pakistan in 2024 was USD 1635, much higher than the income in the poles of regular (USD 122) and irregular (USD 1105) migrants’ corridors in Pakistan. Due to both migration, illegal and legal, remittances sent home by migrants have increased by approximately 128 times since mid-70’s from $253 million to $34.7 billion in 2024. Assuming that a high percentage of Pakistanis are employed in the informal sector, the youth unemployment rate would be approximately 9.5 per cent for a few years and this is an underestimate.
The study shows that with enhanced enforcement; there is a tendency for the persons to take the illegal routes and there is a lack of economics sensitivity in the illegal routes. The expansion of legal supply to lessen the number of illegal crossings is another policy change highlighted as improving the situation, and reflects the empirical findings of the successful lawful crossing programmes at the US-Mexico border and the earlier labor agreements, like the Bracero Program.
What the Findings Point?
It’s not a problem of law enforcement failing to catch offenders — it’s a problem of the state failing to convict and punish the ones it catches. The recommendations in the paper are based on that diagnosis – fast-track courts for both trafficking and smuggling, increased legal migration, circular labor contracts; vocational training, so that the wage gap is narrowed, one of the driving forces behind people migrating in the first place; and linking anti-trafficking units with bodies responsible for financial monitoring to monitor money in informal hawala systems.
This cycle will continue until more courts and check points are being put in place to keep pace with more and more offloading being increased and/or closer and more frequent patrol arrangements. That’s what has happened in this country in the last few years; as one of the main countries of origin for irregular migration in Europe.
