Malaysia's Mass Deportation of Myanmar Refugees Sparks Fear Among Tens of Thousands as Raids Intensify and Aid Resources Dwindle

The phone calls come in waves, more than a hundred each day, and almost all of them carry the same desperate plea. A refugee community leader in Kuala Lumpur, identified only as Raf for safety reasons, has become an unofficial crisis hotline for Myanmar nationals living in Malaysia. The people reaching out to him are frightened, uncertain whether they will be the next to be loaded onto buses and sent back to a country many of them fled years ago. "They are crying, asking me to do something," Raf told Al Jazeera, describing the panic that has swept through refugee communities since Malaysian authorities began carrying out deportations under a repatriation agreement with Myanmar's military government.

The first group of nearly 1,500 refugees was deported on Tuesday, part of a broader plan announced by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim's administration to send back at least 5,000 Myanmar nationals. The move represents a striking shift for a country that has long served as a destination for refugees fleeing conflict and persecution in Myanmar. For the tens of thousands of Myanmar refugees still in Malaysia, the deportations have raised an urgent and terrifying question: who might be next?

The removals are taking place alongside an escalating campaign of immigration raids targeting refugee communities. More than 50,000 refugees have been detained in such operations this year alone, and advocates working with refugee populations report that the frequency of raids has surged since June, when Anwar announced the repatriation agreement with Myanmar's military leadership. Heidy Quah, founder and executive director of the Malaysian nonprofit Refuge for the Refugees, described the scale of the crackdown in stark terms. "We've seen a sharp increase. Raids are happening every single day. There's up to 50 raids or more happening every day," she said.

Official figures appear to support that assessment. Home Affairs Minister Saifuddin Nasution told local media that the government has conducted more than 9,700 operations from the start of this year through September 17, an average of roughly 37 per day. According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, more than 10,000 Myanmar nationals are currently being held in Malaysia's immigration depots, where they await processing or removal.

The numbers behind Malaysia's refugee population underscore the scale of the crisis. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that Malaysia hosts more than 215,000 refugees, of whom nearly 194,000 are from Myanmar. That group includes more than 126,000 Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim minority that has faced decades of persecution in Myanmar, as well as nearly 16,000 people from the Chin community and about 33,000 from other Myanmar ethnic groups. Smaller numbers of refugees from Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Syria, Sri Lanka, Palestine and Iraq also live in the country.

Among the first group deported on Tuesday, community leaders have not identified any Rohingya, according to Al Jazeera. Many of those removed instead belonged to other ethnic minorities from Myanmar who are more likely to hold valid national identification documents. Raf explained the grim logic behind the distinction: "The Rohingyas are a problem for deportation because Myanmar denies their citizenship. So I don't think that Myanmar will agree and accept all those Rohingyas."

Myanmar officially classifies the Rohingya as Bangladeshi immigrants, despite the community's long history in the country and its distinct ethnic identity. The Myanmar military has repeatedly carried out violent crackdowns against the Rohingya, including a 2017 campaign that many rights organizations have described as genocide. That violence triggered a mass exodus, with hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh, Malaysia, India and other neighboring countries.

Community leaders say the raids in Malaysia this year appear to have been directed at areas that were featured in anti-refugee videos circulating on social media. In those videos, content creators filmed refugee-populated neighborhoods and portrayed them as centers of disorder and criminality. The footage has been shared thousands of times across platforms including Threads, TikTok and Facebook. Al Jazeera contacted Malaysia's Immigration Department to verify whether the videos were connected to the raids but did not receive a response before publication. The accounts that posted and shared the anti-refugee content also did not respond to requests for comment.

The hostility toward refugees has unfolded against a backdrop of shrinking support for the organizations that assist them. Since the closure of the United States Agency for International Development in July 2025, local and international aid groups have seen their capacity to help refugees decline sharply. Quah said the loss of funding severely curtailed resources for groups providing basic necessities such as healthcare. "Then slowly, United Nations organizations were being defunded, and even within the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Malaysia, they lost a lot of staff," she said, noting that the job cuts reflected broader global retrenchments at UNHCR last year.

The agency's financial difficulties have continued. On Tuesday, UNHCR said it faces a funding gap of $5.79 billion and, as of July, had received only 32 percent of the funds it needs for the year. In Malaysia, the shortfall has translated into weaker protection for refugees and higher rates of exploitation, according to Quah. She noted that even people holding UNHCR cards have been arrested and held for around 14 days while their documents are verified. In one case, an asylum-seeking woman who had scheduled an appointment with UNHCR representatives this month was detained, and immigration authorities demanded a letter from the organization confirming her status. Although UNHCR verified that she was seeking asylum, she remained in detention, Quah said.

The deportations have drawn urgent appeals from UNHCR and rights groups in Malaysia, which have called on the government to halt the removals as violence continues inside Myanmar. The day before Malaysia sent back the first group of refugees, a military air strike in Rakhine state—the historic homeland of the Rohingya—was reported to have killed at least 33 people. The Arakan Army said the victims included vendors, shoppers and pedestrians. In June, the United Nations said Myanmar's military was responsible for the deaths of more than 700 civilians, underscoring the dangers that await those forced to return.

For refugees in Malaysia, the combination of intensified raids, a government committed to repatriation, declining international support and a home country still embroiled in conflict has created a climate of pervasive fear. Each day brings fresh reports of arrests and removals, and community leaders like Raf find themselves fielding desperate calls from people who see few options and even less protection. The question that dominates their conversations is no longer whether deportations will continue, but who will be taken next.