The Houthis deliberately flood Saudi Arabia with African immigrants |

Riyadh – In recent months, the phenomenon of infiltration of African immigrants, especially from Ethiopia, into Saudi territory through the southern borders has grown, amid accusations by the Houthi group of forming mafias to smuggle people and trying to drown the kingdom with more migrants in a scenario similar to that which Turkey pursued when it sought to blackmail the European Union by opening its borders to crowds. Displaced people from Syria and other countries to gain political and financial gains.

Since 2015, Saudi Arabia has led an Arab coalition to support the legitimate Yemeni government in the face of the Houthi coup, and the war between the coalition and the Iranian-backed armed organization, which extends its control over the capital, Sanaa, and a large part of the Yemeni territories, including those on the borders with the Kingdom, have taken many forms and dimensions.

The Houthis sought to expand the scope of their targeting of Saudi Arabia, in addition to the use of drones and long-range missiles that were developed by Iranian hands to strike strategic locations in the depths of the Kingdom, the organization intended to form networks to smuggle African migrants through rugged valleys and paths that are difficult to monitor into the Kingdom.

This situation prompted Saudi Arabia to mobilize and tighten its pursuit of illegal immigrants. Over the weekend, the authorities were able to arrest dozens of them in a number of parts of the capital, Riyadh, and they hold Ethiopian nationality.

The assistant media spokesman for the Riyadh police, Major Khaled Al-Kreidis, said that the competent authorities in the region continued their field efforts in following up on violators of border security regulations, as these efforts resulted in the arrest of 159 violators of Ethiopian nationality in a number of locations in Riyadh, and they were stopped and taken against all of them. Regular procedures for referring them to the competent authority.

The file of illegal immigrants coming from Ethiopia and the rest of the Horn of Africa is a burden on Saudi Arabia

And the file of illegal immigrants coming from Ethiopia and the rest of the Horn of Africa has become a burden on the Kingdom in light of the significant increase in their numbers in recent months, as the Saudi embassy in Addis Ababa revealed, earlier, that about 20 thousand Ethiopian immigrants have recently crossed into Saudi territory through the Yemeni border.

And Saudi Arabia is finding it difficult to secure the border strip with Yemen for more than 1,400 kilometers, a vast area that includes rugged terrain that is difficult to manage.

Last August, the Houthis expelled thousands of Ethiopian migrants from northern Yemen, under the pretext of the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, which led to the killing of dozens of them and forcing them to flee to the Saudi border.

Although Riyadh was forced to receive hundreds of them in the hope of deporting them to Ethiopia, Addis Ababa showed procrastination in accepting its children under the pretext of the possibility of them carrying the Corona virus, which put Riyadh in an embarrassing position in front of the international community, especially after human rights organizations launched a campaign against the Kingdom against the background of its forced to Put them in positions until solutions to their situations are found.

The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry said last month it would begin repatriating some 2,000 migrants stranded in Saudi Arabia. Addis Ababa denied that it refused to help immigrants from its children in the kingdom, but said it was limited by resources. It blamed human traffickers in Yemen for the migrants’ plight. So far, the deportation process of Ethiopians continues to face obstacles, allowing hundreds of them to flee and hide to avoid deportation.