Undocumented immigration has existed for a long time, and recent years have seen an increased rate of that phenomenon across the world. A 2024 report by the Pew Research Center found an increase in the number of unauthorized immigrants in the United States, rising from 10.2 million in 2019 to 11 million in 2022. Those immigrants came from almost every region in the world, such as South America, Asia, Europe, the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. The report also noted that the number may have continued to rise since then, taking into account record levels of encounters with migrants at U.S. borders from 2022 to 2023, as well as an increase (by around one million) in applicants for asylum status in 2023 (Passel and Krogstad, 2024). Meanwhile, in the European Union (EU), in 2023 about one million undocumented immigrants were believed to be present. Many entered legally but overstayed their visas, while about 300,000 crossed EU borders without permission that year, such as those who entered by boat through the Mediterranean Sea or the Atlantic Ocean (Cook, 2024).

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Immigration, legal or otherwise, is driven by a variety of factors. Migrants from Central America to the U.S., for example, are prompted to leave their home countries and make the journey north to escape violence (such as from gang activity), poverty, and corrupt governments which are unwilling and unable to help their citizens, among other reasons (National Immigration Forum, 2019). In Europe, over the last decade migrants have made their way to the continent as a result of events including war, persecution, coups, and humanitarian crises in countries such as Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, and the Sahel region of Africa; natural disasters; the COVID-19 pandemic; and a desire for economic opportunities (Robinson and Roy, 2024). The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 led to a wave of refugees fleeing the country. In 2021, Afghanistan was the country of origin for 2.7 million refugees; at the end of 2022 that number had leaped drastically to 5.7 million (International Organization for Migration, 2024).

 

National governments have varied in their reaction to the wave of immigration. In 2015, more than 1.2 million people entered the EU to claim asylum, mostly driven by the war in Syria. The EU’s reaction to this situation was governed by the Common European Asylum System (CEAS), which was intended to aid cooperation between EU member states, ease the processing of asylum claims, and support refugees within the EU, and the Dublin Regulation, which assigned responsibility for an individual’s asylum processing to the EU country that individual first entered. This system, which already placed a heavy burden on states on the EU’s frontiers (such as Greece, Italy, and Hungary), quickly buckled under this massive influx of migrants. Germany, under Chancellor Angela Merkel, opened her borders to the migrants, while Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán proved far more reluctant and refused to admit more than a thousand refugees under the EU’s migrant quota (Varma and Roehse, 2024). A 2016 referendum in Hungary rejected the quota, although it did not become legally valid due to a lack of turnout. Nevertheless, Orbán and his Fidesz party saw it as a validation of their migrant policy (MacDowall, 2016).

 

In Asia, persecution by the government of Myanmar has forced around a million Rohingya people since the mid-2010s to flee to neighboring countries, mostly to Bangladesh, but also to other countries including India and Southeast Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand (International Organization for Migration, 2023). Bangladesh hosts large numbers of Rohingyas, with about one million of them residing in camps in the country’s Cox’s Bazar district as of 2024, but has expressed concern that its limited resources will not allow the country to support any more Rohingya refugees (Ganguly, 2025; Paul, 2024). Rohingyas in Southeast Asia have had mixed fortunes; about 200,000 of them live in Malaysia without any legal status or citizenship, making their presence there technically illegal and complicating access to healthcare, education, and employment (Doctors Without Borders, 2024). Around 2,800 Rohingyas currently reside in Indonesia, similarly struggling to gain access to healthcare, education, and even food (Rahman, 2025). Indonesian law provides limited protection for refugees, while Malaysia and Thailand do not legally recognize refugees. None of those countries to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 Protocol (Chuah, 2023). Thus, although governments in this region have been willing to accommodate the Rohingyas within their borders, the lack of legality with regards to their presence means that access to facilities needed for a dignified life is far from guaranteed.

 

Refugee Protection under International Law and Its Application to Undocumented Immigrants

International law provides for the protection of refugees who have made their way to another country. Article 1 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, commonly known as the Refugee Convention, defines a refugee as someone who is outside the country of his nationality as a result of a “well-founded fear” of persecution because of his “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion” and is unable or, due to that fear, unwilling to avail himself of that country’s protection. If he does not have a nationality, then he must be outside his “country of habitual residence” and unable or, due to fear of persecution, unwilling to return to that country. The 1951 Convention previously restricted its jurisdiction either to “events occurring in Europe before 1 January 1951” “events occurring in Europe or elsewhere” before that date (thus covering refugees from the Holocaust), and contracting states had to make a declaration making it clear which of those clauses applied to them (Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1951). However, the 1967 Protocol to the Convention removed these geographical and temporal limitations (Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, 1967).

Under certain conditions, refugees may not be deported to a country where they may be at risk. This is known as the principle of non-refoulement. “Refoulement” derives from the French word refouler (“to force back, push in”). “Refoulement” is defined by Merriam-Webster as “the act of forcing a refugee or asylum seeker to return to a country or territory where he or she is likely to face persecution” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). Non-refoulement bans such an act when certain prerequisites are satisfied. Non-refoulement is generally regarded as a norm of customary international law, based on the consistent practice of states driven by a sense of legal obligation. Multiple courts (such as the European Court of Human Rights and the British House of Lords), international institutions (including the International Law Commission, the International Law Association, and the Red Cross, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), and scholars (Sir Elihu Lauterpacht and James Hathaway, among others), have all stated or suggested that non-refoulement is part of customary international law. This means that all states are bound by this principle under international law, even if they are not party to the Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol (Lynch, 2021).

Article 33(1) of the Refugee Convention enshrines the principle as following:
 

No Contracting State shall expel or return ("refouler") a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.

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The content of Article 33(1) echoes that of Article 1. “Race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion,” the key criteria in defining what a refugee is, are also become the key criteria in restricting the ability of states to deport refugees. States may not deport refugees if they have any of the characteristics mentioned in Article 33(1) and those characteristics would put their lives or freedom in danger in the state or territory they are deported to. It must be noted, however, that there are limits to the application of non-refoulement. Article 33(2) immediately follows by stating:

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The benefit of the present provision may not, however, be claimed by a refugee whom there are
reasonable grounds for regarding as a danger to the security of the country in which he is, or who,
having been convicted by a final judgement of a particularly serious crime, constitutes a danger to
the community of that country.

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Thus, it is possible for a country to not apply non-refoulement for a person who is deemed to be a threat to the security of the state or–having been convicted for a “particularly serious crime” without possibility of appeal–the community there. James Hathaway and Colin Harvey have noted that there has to be “reasonable grounds” for someone to be deemed dangerous to the security of the state. The Refugee Convention’s travaux préparatoires (documents on discussions, negotiations, and drafting of a treaty/convention) emphasized that only severe crimes such as “rape, homicide, armed robbery, and arson” should lead to the waiving of non-refoulement protection. Hathaway and Harvey also highlighted the actual risk presented by the person in question, stating that “a connection must be made between the nature of the conviction and the real risk posed by the person’s presence in the state, otherwise the exception cannot come into effect” (Duffy, 2008).

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The principle of non-refoulement is also contained within the 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Torture Convention). Article 3 of the Convention declares:

1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

2. For the purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations including, where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights.

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Based on the above, anyone who has fled the country of his own origin can claim danger of torture in order to avoid being returned to that country. In doing this, it must be proven there are indeed “substantial grounds” of such danger that will validate the person’s belief. While the article directs the relevant authorities to consider “all relevant considerations,” it also specifically singles out the state’s human rights record for attention. Note that the prohibition on torture has been accepted under international law as a peremptory norm (jus cogens), a norm which cannot be derogated from for any reason and under any circumstances (Duffy, 2008). Therefore, it will be in the state’s best interest to maintain a good human rights record, especially when it is seeking the return of anyone who has fled that state for fear of torture.

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Thus, according to the principle of non-refoulement under customary international law, the 1951 Refugee Convention (and its 1967 Protocol), and the 1984 Torture Convention, there is a path for undocumented immigrants to claim protection under that principle and avoid being expelled or deported to their country of origin or another territory. They can do so if it is clear that they are fleeing persecution as a result of falling into any of the categories stated in Article 1 of the Refugee Convention, thus making them a refugee, and that such expulsion or deportation will put their life or freedom in danger; if that is the case, Article 33(1) forbids such expulsion or deportation. Note that Article 33 and the Refugee Convention as a whole do not order states to admit refugees into their territories; Article 33, and the principle of non-refoulement itself, deal with their potential expulsion (Mehmood, 2019).

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Article 33(2) of the Refugee Convention allows a state to waive non-refoulement and expel anyone who has been determined to be a danger to the security of the country or that country’s community. However, this provision can possibly be overruled if the person in question is in danger of torture. The prohibition on torture is a peremptory norm which cannot be waived under any circumstances. Article 3 of the Torture Convention prohibits expulsion, extradition, or the return of anyone to a state or territory where that person would be in danger of being tortured. One can argue, even if he is deemed a threat to the state or its community under Article 33(2) of the Refugee Convention, that being sent to a country or territory where he would be at risk of torture would violate Article 3 of the Torture Convention and the peremptory norm on torture, and that the state expelling or deporting him is facilitating that violation. Nevertheless, if the person is not at risk of torture, states can still use Article 33(2) of the Refugee Convention to expel or deport him if he is danger to the state or community, even if doing so would put his life or freedom in danger.

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Another thing that undocumented immigrants should keep in mind when trying to claim non-refoulement protection is that states differ in their interpretation of Article 33 of the Refugee Convention. Article 33(1) forbids states from “expel[ling] or return[ing] ("refouler") a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories…” Here, while it is agreed that non-refoulement applies to those already within the territory of the receiving state, not all states use the same methods in dealing with refugees at their borders (Mehmood, 2019). Ellen F. D’ Angelo divided states’ methods on this matter into four approaches (D’ Angelo, 2009):

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• The first approach, the “absolute state sovereignty approach,” sees non-refoulement as applying only to people who have made it into the destination state. Nevertheless, Article 33, according to this approach, does not forbid states from actively blocking people who have not yet reached their borders from entering the state. The British Court of Appeal (England and Wales) and the United States Supreme Court upheld this approach in European Roma Rights (2003) and Sale v. Haitian Centers Council (1993), respectively.
   

• The second approach, the “collective approach,” relies on cooperation and burden-sharing between states. Under this approach, refugees may be relocated from one state to another, under the view that Article 33 does not prohibit moving them to a third state where they will be safe. This is the approach adopted by the EU, exemplified by the Dublin Regulation.
   

• The third approach, which D’ Angelo calls the “collective approach with a twist,” sees states adopting procedures which allow them to avoid reviewing asylum applications and granting refugee status (one example being France with its “transit zones”), which they view as legal under Article 33 as long as the refugees reach another state where they will be safe from persecution.
   

• The fourth approach, the “restrictive definitional approach,” adopts a narrow reading of Article 33. States which adopt this approach may argue that not all refugees are protected by non-refoulement. Non-refoulement, according to this approach, applies only specifically to those refugees whose expulsion, return, or deportation would actually put their life or freedom in danger. The U.S. Supreme Court adopted this view for refugees who had already crossed the border in Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Cardoza-Fonseca (1987).

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Furthermore, although non-refoulement is already a principle of customary international law, not all states are party to the Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol, and may use their non-participation there as a justification to limit or deny the rights refugees are entitled to, or even refuse to recognize undocumented immigrants fleeing persecution as refugees, especially if their own national laws do not have such provisions. Malaysia and Thailand, for example, are not signatories to either the 1951 Convention or the 1967 Protocol. They also do not provide legal recognition for refugees under their own laws. This has complicated matters for Rohingyas within those countries, who are not recognized as refugees even though they fled persecution in Myanmar and, being undocumented, struggle for access to healthcare and education (Chuah, 2023). Some scholars, courts, and governments have considered non-refoulement to be a peremptory norm, such as Jean Allain and Alexander Orakhelashvili. Allain and Orakhelashvili cited the 1984 Cartagena Declaration on Refugees by Latin American states, which states that non-refoulement “should be acknowledged and observed as a rule of jus cogens.” The 2014 Brazil Declaration also affirmed the jus cogens nature of non-refoulement. However, this opinion is far from universal. Aoife Duffy sees evidence of non-refoulement as jus cogens as not convincing enough. Rene Bruin and Kees Wouters considered whether non-refoulement may be a peremptory norm, but did not come to a clear conclusion on this matter (Costello and Foster, 2015).

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India and the Rohingyas: A Cautionary Tale

As of December 2024, data from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) shows that there are 23,300 Rohingya refugees and asylum seekers currently in India (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, n.d.). Their life there is complicated by India’s lack of legal regulations on refugees, meaning that the Rohingyas officially have no refugee status and are forced to rely on “ad-hoc administrative measures” instead of legislative acts (Alexander, 2021; Katrak and Kulkarni, 2021). In August 2017, the Indian union government instructed the country’s states to start deporting undocumented immigrants, including the Rohingya, noting that they were taking up the country’s resources and presented a threat to India’s security (Rahman, 2017).

 

In the case of Mohammad Salimullah v. Union of India (2017), Mohammad Salimullah and Mohammad Shaqir, two Rohingya in India, petitioned the Supreme Court of India for a writ directing the Indian government to provide basic amenities for Rohingya refugees in India. In 2021, they filed an interlocutory application seeking the release of some 150-170 Rohingyas held in the territory of Jammu and facing deportation back to Myanmar. The petitioners stated that non-refoulement is guaranteed as part of Article 21 of the Constitution of India on the protection of life and personal liberty, that Articles 14 (on equality of law) and 21 of the Constitution apply to non-citizens, and that–although India is not party to the Refugee Convention–it is party to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, and the Torture Convention, meaning that India is nevertheless bound by the principle of non-refoulement under international law, and violating its international law obligations would violate Article 51(c) of the Constitution on respecting international law and treaty obligations (Mohammad Salimullah v. Union of India, interlocutory application, 2021). The Supreme Court of India largely rejected the petitioners’ arguments.

 

The Court observed that India is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol, and thus it is doubtful if Article 51(c) of the Constitution is relevant in this case unless India became party to the Convention or the Protocol. The right not to be deported, according to the Supreme Court, is “ancillary or concomitant” to the right to settle in any part of India under Article 19(1)(e), and that only Indian citizens have this right. The Court also noted “serious allegations” that the Indian government brought up in its reply to the petitioners on the “influx of illegal immigrants” into the country and the threat it posed to national security, that it had previously dismissed a similar application against the deportation of Rohingyas from the Indian state of Assam. The petitioners relied on a 2020 judgment of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Gambia v. Myanmar to demonstrate that the Rohingya refugees would be put in grave danger if deported to Myanmar, but the Supreme Court avoided commenting on the “present state of affairs” in Myanmar, stating that it is not “cannot comment on something happening in another country.” The Court ruled that the deportation of Rohingyas in Jammu can go ahead as long as the proper procedure is followed (Mohammad Salimullah v. Union of India, interlocutory application, 2021).

In Mohammad Ismail v. Union of India (2025), the Supreme Court refused to halt further deportations of Rohingyas from India. The petitioners in this case claimed that 43 Rohingya refugees had been deported by being dropped into the Andaman Sea (The Hindu, 2025). They had been arrested in Delhi on the basis of “biometric data collection.” The 43 were reportedly held in police stations for more than 24 hours, then flown to Port Blair in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands (some 2,500 kilometers away from Delhi), where they were brought onto an Indian naval vessel. Survivors claimed that they were “tortured, sexually abused, and accused of terrorism” while onboard the vessel, before then being thrown onto the sea with life jackets and ordered to swim to a “’safe’ international refuge.” It was not clear how many survived (Vats, 2025). The Supreme Court, however, was skeptical of the petitioners’ claim, calling them filled with “fanciful ideas” as well as “vague, evasive, and sweeping statements” and doubting how a petitioner based in Delhi could verify something which took place in faraway maritime regions. Reacting to the petitioners’ reference to United Nations reports, the Court declared, “People sitting outside cannot challenge our sovereignty.” The Court thus refused to grant relief to the petitioners (Citizens for Justice and Peace, 2025).

The Rohingyas’ struggle with the Indian legal system is an example of a problem which immigrants and refugees may face (or are already facing): some states are not party to the Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol, and there are states (such as India, Malaysia, and Thailand) which do not provide legal status for refugees under their national laws. Not only may they be denied the protections afforded to refugees in other countries, they may also not be recognized as refugees at all, saddling them with legal, political, and socioeconomic problems which stem from being undocumented immigrants. Although non-refoulement is a norm of customary international law, this has nevertheless not stopped certain states from attempting to deport undocumented immigrants from their territories, even those who come there to flee persecution. Any undocumented immigrants who intend to claim refugee status, and the non-refoulement protection that comes with it, would do well to keep this in mind.

Conclusion

Undocumented immigrants who want to claim the protection of non-refoulement must be able to prove that they are “refugees” under international law. Article 1 of the Refugee Convention defines a refugee as someone who is outside the country of his nationality or (if he does not have a nationality) former habitual residence as a result of a “well-founded fear” of persecution on the basis of “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Article 33(1) then goes on to state that no refugee should be expelled or returned to the frontiers of territories (non-refoulement) where his “life or freedom” would be in danger as a result of any of those characteristics first mentioned in Article 1.

There is, therefore, a rather high threshold for undocumented immigrants who intend to claim non- refoulement. There must be grounds to believe that their lives or freedom would be at risk were they to be expelled from the state they are currently in. This threshold notably can exclude, for examples, economic migrants who enter another country without legal authorization in search of employment or a better standard of living. If they are migrating purely for economic reasons, and not to flee persecution as outlined in Article 1 of the Refugee Convention, then they may not qualify as “refugees”–and so may not be able to claim non-refoulement protection against deportation. However, even for those undocumented immigrants who qualify as refugees, exceptions can still be made with regards to the application of non-refoulement; Article 33(2) allows states to deport refugees who constitute a danger to the state’s security or–having been convicted without possibility of appeal–to the danger of the country’s community. There is one situation where these exceptions can be overruled: if expelling the refugees puts them in danger of being tortured. The prohibition of torture is a peremptory norm (jus cogens) under international law which may not be violated for any reason and under any circumstances, and expelling refugees to a territory where they are at risk of torture can violate this peremptory norm.

It must also be noted that not all states have the same interpretation of Article 33. Some prefer a more restrictive approach, interpreting it as applying only to refugees who have already made it into their territories and giving it freedom to enact policies to prevent refugees who have not yet reached their borders from entering the country. Some–like the countries of the European Union–opt for a burden-sharing approach where refugees may be sent to a third country as long as they will not be persecuted there. Some states are not even party to the Refugee Convention or the 1967 Protocol in the first place, and refugees who make their way to those countries may find themselves with fewer legal protections–and greater legal, political, and socioeconomic hurdles–than had they gone to a state that is party to the Convention or the Protocol, as shown in the case of the Rohingya in India. Some countries do not even legally recognize refugees under their national laws.

Any undocumented immigrants who wish to have the benefits of non-refoulement protection, and their lawyers, should consider all these factors if those immigrants want to stay in the country they are currently in and avoid expulsion or deportation. It could be unseemly to ask these immigrants to simply move to another country where they are more likely to be accepted under that country’s laws. Some immigrants fleeing persecution might choose a particular country because it is the easiest to reach, they have friends or relatives there or identify with a particular community that is already in that country, or they feel they might have a chance at a better life there, even if the country’s laws are not necessarily favorable to them. Nevertheless, we must also account for the fact that not all countries have the same capacity in accepting immigrants; some countries might be too small, but even large countries might not have adequate facilities immediately available to ensure that immigrants, even those who qualify as refugees fleeing persecution, have an appropriate standard of living and are able to integrate into the local community. In these circumstances, the burden-sharing model as adopted by the EU seems to be an optimal solution, lessening the burden that each state has to bear, but of course in implementing this it must be ensured that all refugees are placed in states where they will not be further persecuted.

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