Sri Lankan Appeals Court on Monday gave permission to authorities to send back scores of Pakistani asylum seekers, after the government said they were a threat to the island’s security and public health.

Representing the government, Deputy Solicitor General Janak de Silva asked the court to lift an earlier suspension of deportations, saying there was evidence Pakistanis were committing crimes and bringing malaria into the country, which was otherwise virtually free of the disease.

“Interim relief was vacated and the court has dismissed the application. Now all the asylum seekers are exposed to deportation if government wants,” Lakshan Dias, lawyer of a 38-year-old Pakistani woman who complained after her husband, brother and father were detained pending deportation has told Reuters news agency.

On August 15, the Appeals Court ordered authorities to temporarily stop deporting the Pakistanis, after the woman said her family was being forcibly sent home without having their claims properly assessed. The United Nations refugee agency says 88 Pakistanis have been deported since August 1 and calls this a breach of international law.

The agency has called for an end to the deportations and demanded access to another 75 detained people who are awaiting deportation.

However, the Sri Lankan government counter argues, saying that the Pakistanis are part of an influx of economic immigrants in the past year who have become a burden on the country’s resources and potentially compromised state and regional security. It can also be a potential threat to public health, Sri Lanka argues, as Assistant Solicitor General de Silva stated to the Courts.

There has been a large influx of refugees from Pakistan as well as Afghanistan to Sri Lanka in recent times. It was announced that the government was opening two new detention centers to house the growing numbers.