The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has raised concerns over the revelation that the Department of Home Affairs has spent over R52 million in five months to deport more than 19,000 undocumented foreigners to their homelands.
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber disclosed this in a written Parliamentary reply, to a question posed by EFF Member of Parliament (MP) Thapelo Mogale.
Mogale asked how much money the department spent, from April 1 this year, to deport illegal immigrants back to their countries.
In a written response, Schreiber said they have sent 19,750 illegal foreigners to their countries, between April 1 and August 31, costing the department over R52,800 million.
Taking to X (Formerly known as Twitter) Schreiber said in annualised terms, home affairs is set for the strongest immigration enforcement performance in years.
“We are now on track to outperform last year by a full 50%, when there were 39,627 deportations over 12 months,” Schreiber said.
“We are also on course for a whopping 164% increase in deportations compared to 2022/23, when the number was only 22,436 over a full year.”
According to him, the Border Management Authority (BMA) has also done another 410,332 direct deportations and arrests at the border over the same period.
News attempted to get a comment from Mogale who posed the question, but attempts to do so did not yield positive results as his phone was not answered.
However, in response to Schreiber’s tweet, Mogale expressed a concern that despite the efforts to deport over 19,000 illegal foreigners, they can easily re-enter the country just after being deported owing to weak border management.
“But minister, you know very well that BMA is unable to secure the full length of our borders because it doesn’t have the funding. The 19,000 people you deport today for R52 million are still able to enter the country undetected the following week,” Mogale wrote.
In August, News reported that 95 foreign Libyan nationals were deported to Libya, after police in Mpumalanga uncovered and arrested them at an illegal military camp in White River.
The training camp was uncovered through a collaboration between the police, the Provincial Joint Structures (ProvJOINTS) and the Department of Home Affairs.
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