As many as 25,362 illegal immigrants were arrested in Saudi Arabia in the last week of March 2025 alone, an official release said on Saturday. The arrested individuals were found guilty of breaching border security laws, and employment and residency regulations existing in the Kingdom.
The Saudi authorities further broke down the statistics, clarifying that as many as 18,504 individuals among the arrested 25,362 were overstaying their visas or violating similar residency-related laws. 2,854 were picked up for job-related issues like working in the Arab nation without proper papers while 4,004 were caught for trying to cross the country's borders illegally.
Among the 4,004 people arrested, 1,533 people were apprehended while trying to enter Saudi Arabia sans proper papers while the remaining were trying to sneak into neighbouring nations. Among those trying to enter the Kingdom illegally, 65 per cent were from Ethiopia, 30 per cent were Yemeni nationals, and the remaining 5 per cent belonged to other countries, Arab World said in a report.
A landlocked country in the Horn of Africa, 68.7 per cent of the population in Ethiopia (82,679 thousand people in 2021) is multi-dimensionally poor, says the United Nations Development Programme. An additional 18.4 per cent is classified as vulnerable to multidimensional poverty (22,076 thousand people in 2021) in the drought-ravaged country.
Yemen, widely considered the poorest country in the Middle East, facing a dire humanitarian crisis due to the ongoing civil war.
Earlier this month, the United Arab Emirates also revealed the details of a similar crackdown targeting foreign nationals overstaying their visas and travel agents helping people work in the country illegally. At least 6,000 people have been deported by UAE authorities since January for overstaying their visas.
