Italian authorities deported 40 Egyptians on Monday amid claims they had entered the country illegally.
The deportees arrived at Cairo International Airport on a plane from Catania, an Italian city on the east coast of Sicily.
Airport staff reportedly allocated a special team of officers to screen their papers.
Deportees claimed they fell for what they described as "travelling gangs," who acquire huge sums of money to help immigrants travel across the Mediterranean to Italy.
The would-be migrants are often ferried across to the Italian coast in fishing boats.
The head of the airport security department, Major General Alaa Ali, ordered Egyptian authorities to take legal action against the 40 suspects.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
