"Saudi authorities hide abuses in migrant centres amid wave of arrests," 6 May 2022

Saudi authorities are concealing rampant abuses and pitiful conditions at migrant detention centres while continuing to arrest thousands of African and Yemeni migrants...

Police have also ordered people set for deportation to sign non-disclosure agreements...

Since an agreement was signed in March, thousands of Ethiopians have returned to their homeland, with another 1,031 landing in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Wednesday.

However, mass arrests by Saudi authorities continue to target thousands more, with 15,000 migrants, almost all of them Ethiopians and Yemenis, detained in a single week in March alone.

As a result, detention centres aren't emptying, and the abuse persists, according to detainees...

[Omer, a migrant at al-Shumaisi said] "... my company laid me off as it went bankrupt because of the pandemic. Without an employer, I couldn't renew my residency papers. I was arrested shortly after my papers expired."

Semir added that this was the case with many of the new arrivals that had flooded the Riyadh facility he is held at. Nearly 10,000 of those detained in the March crackdown were singled out for residency permit issues.