For Sarah Ali, the first sign of trouble came when stories about men from her village in Pakistan and neighboring Shiite-majority areas disappearing or being deported without explanation began to crop up in her social media feeds and WhatsApp groups, as well as in conversations with relatives back home. Her husband, Taha, had worked for Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority for over a decade, so at first she didn’t think much of it.
Then, on April 12, just as he began an overnight shift, the officers stationed at his workplace were alerted about his name and photo appearing in a police system. According to Taha, the officers (who knew him personally) were visibly confused, asking what he had done before realizing they were being instructed to detain him. Plainclothes officers from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) transported him from his workplace in handcuffs.
“He was in complete shock,” Ali, who asked for her name to be changed, told New Lines. “They showed him his photo and asked what he had done. Then they told him, ‘We’re really sorry, but we can’t not take your phone away from you, because they’re watching us.’”
Within hours, he was handcuffed and taken to Jebel Ali police station. There, he was told only that his case was being handled at another facility. He would later be transferred to another detention site before ending up at Al-Awir, which is widely understood to be the final stop before deportation. No formal charges were presented at any stage, a pattern described by multiple detainees.
Ali flew to Dubai days later and attempted to locate him across the detention facilities, where she encountered other families also trying to make contact with their loved ones. At each site, she was given vague explanations without actually being told what he had been charged with. At one point, an officer suggested he may have shared images related to the ongoing regional conflict, a claim she rejected.
“Because he has a job in the government, they have very strict rules. So he doesn’t post anything political. He doesn’t post anything religious,” she said. “In fact, for like, the last two months, roughly, or three months, he’s not even had any social media. He had deactivated everything.”
Ali was told repeatedly to return later, only to be turned away again. At Al-Awir, she said officials drifted between talking about the case in terms of deportation and “continued investigation,” but offered no formal documentation.
Days after his arrest, she was ultimately granted a brief visit on visitors’ day, but only for 10 minutes and through a glass partition. Finally, Taha was deported, less than a week after his arrest. He told New Lines he was placed on a flight to Faisalabad, despite being from a village several hours away.
Their story is one of a growing number of testimonies from Pakistani nationals and their families, who say they and their relatives have been detained and, in many cases, deported from the United Arab Emirates without explanation. According to these accounts, a majority of those affected appear to be Shiite.
These reports come amid strains in UAE-Pakistan ties. As the South Asian nation emerged as a mediator between the United States and Iran, the UAE made a surprise request for its longtime ally Islamabad to immediately repay a debt of $3.5 billion, prompting Saudi Arabia, which signed a mutual defense pact with Pakistan last year, to step in with financial support.
Observers said the demand may have been punitive and reflected Abu Dhabi’s growing frustration with Islamabad, particularly as the latter deepens ties with Riyadh and over what was seen as Pakistan’s muted response to Iranian attacks on the Gulf.
Moreover, remittances from the UAE are a critical source of foreign exchange for Pakistan, so deportations could affect thousands of families as well as the broader economy.
Recently, the UAE also foregrounded internal security threats, which included alleged Iran-linked “cells” operating inside the country, and arrested 27 accused members. In a video posted online, UAE security services stated that the threat from Iran “extends to attempts to destabilize our society from within,” encouraging residents to report any suspicious activity.
Even in Pakistan, a mix of tension and silence surrounds the question of the Shiite community, many of whom are uneasy about the country’s mediation role and deepening engagement with the U.S. after the killing of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Pakistan’s Field Marshal Asim Munir’s reported remarks that those who “love Iran” should go there, along with the omission of a story on rising Shiite anger in the Pakistani edition of The New York Times, have further deepened these concerns.
Against this backdrop, the deportation of Pakistani Shiites from the UAE places Islamabad in an increasingly precarious position. When New Lines approached Tahir Andrabi, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he denied the deportations and abruptly hung up.
Mohammad Amin Shaheedi, a senior Shiite cleric and chief of Ummat-e-Wahida Pakistan, a religious and political organization representing Pakistan’s Shiite community, told New Lines that, in the wake of the Iran war, the UAE government had launched “what appears to be an organized campaign to deport Shiite individuals from the country.”
According to Shaheedi, the deportations have affected around 5,000 Pakistani Shiite families, comprising roughly 15,000 individuals. “They were reportedly sent back with little more than the clothes on their backs, without being given the opportunity to withdraw their funds from banks or settle their financial affairs,” he said.
“Tragically, the government of Pakistan has so far maintained complete silence on this matter,” Shaheedi said, adding that a “growing sense of fear, anxiety and insecurity had spread among Pakistani Shiite communities residing in other Arab countries.”
A 25-year-old information technology professional, who had moved to Dubai over three years ago and worked at a local hospital, told New Lines that he was deported by authorities despite not being Shiite or having a recognizably Shiite name. He identified as Sunni but said he had visited a local “imam bargah” (a dedicated congregation hall used by Shiite Muslims) with a friend during the first week of the Islamic month of Muharram in 2025, which he believes may have brought him to the attention of authorities.
Several detainees and their families have alleged that identity-tracking mechanisms have perhaps played a role in arrests, including the use of Emirates ID scans at Shiite religious sites. Shaheedi said that their Shiite identity had “reportedly been determined through biometric fingerprint data collected in the past, particularly during their visits to Shiite mosques and places of worship.”
Recounting his detainment and deportation from Dubai, the IT professional said that on April 12, shortly after returning home from a night shift, he received a call from his employers asking him to report to his local police station. There, he was asked to hand over his mobile phone and wallet and was detained for several hours. Despite repeated requests, he said he was not informed of the reason for his detention and was subjected to repeated checks.
“At 11 p.m. that night, after hours of being detained, we were taken to another facility in an armored car,” he said. “I tried to protest and ask the reason for our detention, but there were 15 to 20 people in there who told me not to raise my voice, fearing it could affect all of us. They were worried they might be beaten.” He believed Pakistani migrants in the UAE were being targeted due to the strained ties between the two countries.
Zahir Khan, who worked as a driver in Dubai and has returned to his hometown of Skardu in the Gilgit-Baltistan region of Kashmir after being deported, told New Lines that he was picked up by the CID from the Mall of the Emirates. “I was depositing some cash when I was approached by the officers. They took my ID and phone and told me to accompany them without giving a reason.”
On the way, he said, officers asked him if he was Shiite or Sunni. “I replied, ‘Alhamdulillah [God be praised], I’m Shiite.’” When they asked if he had heard of any other Shiites being detained and he said yes, they told him that “clarifies things” and warned him not to ask further questions.
His story mirrors those of several Pakistani nationals who spoke to New Lines about their detention and deportation. Many said they were held for hours in police custody and transferred between multiple stations before being taken to Al-Awir detention facility.
They alleged varying forms of mistreatment at the detention center. The IT professional said the detainees were made to kneel, and when a man in his 80s, who had just undergone leg surgery, was unable to do so, he was beaten on his leg.
Others said they were strip-searched and denied adequate food, while some alleged the meals were of poor quality and inedible. Taha, Ali’s husband, described the conditions as “horrendous” and said that some were subjected to physical abuse, including one man whose arm was allegedly broken after he refused to strip naked.
Qamar Abbas, 47, who had worked in Dubai as a driver for 24 years, told New Lines that detainees were woken up after every four hours for roll call. He also alleged that their hands and legs were restrained and they were made to keep their heads lowered beneath tables.
He also said that being made to change into blue overalls, the prison uniform, made him feel as though his life had ended. “If the UAE-Pakistan relations are bad, how am I at fault? What is my children’s fault? They are all studying, and my wife has been bedridden for a month. The household situation has collapsed. I have no other source of income,” he said.
Shaheedi claimed that laborers and working-class migrants were among the first to be detained and were allegedly held for several days “under harsh conditions, deprived of food and water, and subjected to questioning focused on their sectarian, religious and political affiliations.”
In some cases, he alleged, detainees were reportedly stripped and filmed, and threatened that the footage would be circulated on social media if they spoke out after returning home. He added that an individual from Pakistan’s Kurram district reportedly took his own life after returning home, which he linked to the ordeal.
By contrast, Shaheedi claimed that “educated Shiite individuals and professionals” were deported “without physical abuse.” They included individuals who had been living in the UAE for over 25 years, he said, and “owned properties worth billions of rupees.” “However, their life savings have been effectively frozen there, and they have been sent back empty-handed, with bans imposed on their reentry into the UAE,” he said.
From Al-Awir, the detainees told New Lines they were processed in batches. The IT professional claimed that the majority of those in detention were Pakistani nationals, along with some Iranians and Afghans, and that more than 100 people were being deported daily. Another detainee, aged 34, who worked as a sports manager in Dubai and has since returned to Rawalpindi after being deported, also corroborated the account.
Khan, who was deported after a week in detention, said, “They didn’t let us pack our belongings. They took us to the airport in the same clothes we had been wearing since our arrest and put us on the flight to Faisalabad.”
The 25-year-old IT professional, the sole breadwinner for his family, now faces starting over after returning to Islamabad. “My family is in shock,” he said. His belongings remain in Dubai, which he hopes to have shipped back through friends and family. He also said he has lost access to his Emirati bank account, where his savings are held, after his government ID was canceled.
Khan noted that people who had spent thousands of dollars to intermediaries to secure jobs in the UAE would survive on one meal a day to earn a living and send money home. “They are very distressed,” he said. He added that efforts were being made to approach authorities in Pakistan, as many debt-ridden deportees had lost everything, and there were limited opportunities in an underdeveloped region like Gilgit-Baltistan.
“I personally know 60-70 people who’ve returned,” Khan said. Ali said she reached out directly to at least two other deportees from the city of Chakwal once she had learned about her husband’s arrest.
In the days following Taha’s return, she claimed that additional relatives were also summoned by authorities in Dubai. Similarly, other deportees told New Lines that, since their return, they’ve been getting calls from family members and friends who have been similarly deported.
As Pakistani nationals returned home after an abrupt rupture of their lives in the UAE, many recalled the slogan that had united citizens and residents alike at the start of the war. “What happened to ‘We are all Emiratis’?” said one.
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