Human rights groups are submitting the petition amid an ongoing crackdown on undocumented foreigners in the country.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has opened a hearing on a petition filed by human rights groups to end terrorism Deportations of Afghans born in Pakistan and those who would be at risk if they returned to Afghanistan.

More than 370,000 Afghans have fled Pakistan since Oct. 1 after Pakistan announced it would expel more than a million refugees and undocumented migrants, mostly Afghans, amid a dispute with Kabul over allegations of anti-Pakistani gunmen there Group shelter.

Pakistan said most Afghans left voluntarily, a claim Kabul rejected, calling Pakistan’s actions “one-sided” and “humiliating.”

“Due to the urgency, as thousands of people are suffering every day, I have asked the court to take up the case as early as next week,” Umar Ijaz Gilani, the human rights activists’ lawyer, said on Friday.

Thousands of undocumented Afghans have gone underground in Pakistan to avoid deportation, fearing for their lives if they return to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan after a hasty and chaotic operation retreat of U.S.-led Western forces in 2021.

Pakistan has long hosted about 1.7 million Afghans, most of whom fled the country during the 1979-1989 Soviet occupation. In addition, more than half a million people fled Afghanistan when the Taliban seized power in August 2021 in the final weeks following the US and NATO withdrawal.

Human rights activists, United Nations officials and others have denounced Pakistan’s policies and urged Islamabad to rethink.

The petition came a day after an official in Balochistan announced that the southwestern province was setting a target for police to arrest and deport 10,000 Afghans who are in the country illegally every day.

Gilani argued before the Supreme Court that the interim government in Pakistan did not have the power to bring about such major political changes. The government is in office until elections in February and, according to Pakistani law, only handles day-to-day state affairs.

The court asked the government for a response later on Friday and postponed the hearing until next week.

At the center of deteriorating relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan is the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a banned armed group also known as the Pakistani Taliban because of its ideological proximity to the Taliban rulers in Afghanistan. The group has been accused of hundreds of deadly attacks after it canceled a ceasefire agreement with the Pakistani government a year ago.

Pakistan said its actions would have no impact on the estimated 1.4 million Afghans registered as refugees living in various parts of Pakistan. Many of them have left their refugee camps over the years and live in rural or urban areas.

The petition was unlikely to have any impact on the crackdown, said Mahmood Shah, a security analyst in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the border with Afghanistan.

“Let us see how the government side convinces the Supreme Court on this matter,” he said.