In the early morning of late April, two returnees walked through different airport terminals, carrying nearly the same financial burdens. The first, a 29-year-old, had just been released from an immigration centre after his family scraped together enough money to pay overstay fines and broker fees around Tk280,000. He had gone to Cambodia nine months earlier after a local broker promised him casino work with a monthly salary of Tk120,000. Instead, he was sold to a scam compound for $1,500, forced to do cryptocurrency fraud, and when he refused to continue the illegal work, his three-month visa was deliberately left to expire, trapping him in irregular status, where every day added $10 to his debt.
The second returnee landed, having spent the previous month in Saudi Arabia’s prison. Despite holding a valid iqama (residential permit) with eight months remaining, he was arrested during routine compliance inspections. Security authorities have arrested more than 11,000 people for violating residency, labour and border regulations during this nationwide inspection. He had invested Tk550,000 to reach Saudi Arabia on what brokers call a ‘free visa,’ a term that disguises the fact that the migration cost has no guarantee of employment. After six months of sporadic work, he managed to send home the equivalent of four months’ salary before detention erased any possibility of recovering his family’s investment.
Both victims entered what migration scholars call a systematic trap, a sequence of exploitation beginning at the country of origin during the process of recruitment and continuing through the period of employment in the country of destination and even in many cases within the process of return and deportation.
The cycle begins with aspirants borrowing against or selling family land or gold to pay recruitment fees that far exceed legal limits, creating immediate debt bondage. Following this, brokers issue false information about wages, accommodation, and visa terms. As a result, workers arrive unprepared for actual conditions at the destination. Once in the destination country, a limited visa tenure or a complete lack of work permits creates an irregular status that restricts mobility and legal recourse. When workers realise the deception, the brokers who facilitated their journey have already collected their fees and moved to the next recruitment cycle, leaving victims to navigate survival. On return, workers face total financial loss yet often remain in precarious situations, hoping for improvement, while daily penalties and expenses deepen debt.
According to the OEP-BMET country clearance data, a total of 929 workers travelled to Cambodia between January and December 2024. This figure rose dramatically to 12,263 in 2025. The upward trend continued into 2026, with 3,606 workers already recorded between January and April. Thousands of aspirants went to Cambodia over the last two years through a recruitment pipeline that begins with employment promises in Saudi Arabia, then redirects them through Thailand to Cambodian border crossings. This bait-and-switch tactic exploits Bangladesh’s dependence on the Middle East labour markets.
Job seekers typically invest Tk 400,000-500,000 to reach Cambodia. Upon arrival, they discover that employment does not exist as promised and that their passports have been seized. When families can’t pay ransoms for release, victims are sold between syndicates.
The trap’s core lies in a misleading ‘free visa’ system that has enriched middlemen while devastating worker families for decades. The migration cost of such an irregular visa is nearly five times the government-approved costs, whereas nearly 43 per cent of those migrants fail to find employment upon arrival. The visa structure itself prohibits stable employment. The moment the initial visa expires, workers transition from migrant to illegal residents automatically.
Bangladeshi workers face another existential threat through the iqama – the residency permit that determines their legal status. The entire iqama processing fee now stands at an eye-watering 11,000 riyals per year, more than the annual income of many employed in domestic work. Kafeels delay paying the iqama fee, workers become undocumented; when they go out, the police detain and deport them. These migrants, technically illegal residents, create ideal conditions for an enforcement campaign.
Around 7,392 illegal residents have been deported as part of a nationwide enforcement campaign carried out from 2 to 8 April 2026, involving coordinated operations against residency, labour, and border-security violations.
The broker infrastructure in Bangladesh operates as a systematic trap, connecting desperate aspirants in rural districts to trafficking networks in Cambodia and exploitative sponsors in Saudi Arabia while extracting fees at every transaction point. Aspirants mostly depend on unlicensed brokers; however, the country maintains more than 1,200 licensed recruitment agencies.
According to returnee testimonies, a broker took 200 aspirants to Cambodia with promises of diverse employment opportunities, then detained them in holding facilities without basic amenities while refusing to return their passports. Similarly, another broker blocked all contact after collecting Tk180,000 from each victim. These are standard operating procedures within a distributed network, where unofficial brokers bear minimal risk while extracting maximum fees from each recruitment cycle.
Workers spent Tk400,000 to 650,000 on family land to travel to different countries. They discover that employment does not exist or pays far less than promised and then choose between immediate return to total financial ruin with irregular status. When enforcement campaigns strike in month six or eight, workers are deported having recovered perhaps one-third of their investment, while the return journey itself incurs additional costs through overstay penalties, detention fees, or broker payments for document processing.
The systematic trap’s final stage occurs in detention facilities where workers stripped of legal status, money, and mobility wait for deportation processes that can take weeks or months.
These are not warnings about migration’s inherent risks but rather testimonies of systematic traps, where exit becomes costly, where the only certainty is that debt will survive deportation even when dreams do not.
Both writers are Adjunct Faculty, Media Studies and Journalism (MSJ), University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB)
