Almost 27,000 people deported in border operation

While facilitating the legitimate movement of more than fivemillion travellers in and out of SA between December 6 last year and January 18, the newly established Border Management Authority caught 15,924 people trying to enter the country illegally.

They also seized unauthorised consignments of crayfish, canned meat, infested tins of gammon, wheat beer, hazelnut paste and hatching poultry eggs, and deported more than 27,000 people.

Speaking at a media briefing yesterday, Dr Nakampe Masiapato explained the outcomes of the BMA’s 43-day festive season operation.

The BMA was recently established by President Cyril Ramaphosa to tackle the issue of illegal migration into SA and properly facilitate cross-border movement.

“[In the 43 days,] 5,096,288 travellers crossed our 71 ports of entry, representing an increase of one-million travellers compared to the 2022/2023 number of four-million travellers,” Masiapato said.

“In facilitating the movement of these travellers, we processed more than 216,594 private vehicles, 21,502 minibus taxis, 6,443 buses and 55,765 trucks through our movement control system.

“Further, we processed more than 13,050 aircraft through our international airports and about 709 vessels across at our seaports.

“In addition, about 407 vessels were processed for crew changes [without a vessel docking at port].”

Most travellers were facilitated through OR Tambo International Airport (993,759), followed by Lebombo land port of entry to Mozambique at 755,066, and then the Beitbridge land port of entry to Zimbabwe at 745,563 travellers.

This was an increase of 22% at OR Tambo, 24% at Lebombo and 25% at Beitbridge.

During implementation of the festive plan, the BMA collaborated with the SA Police Service, SA Revenue Service, SA National Defence Force, Cross Border Road Transport Agency, immigration inspectorate of the department of home affairs, and various traffic authorities.

Masiapato said the BMA had detected 15,924 people trying to enter SA without the correct documents.

“After intercepting them, we took their fingerprints, declared them undesirable and banned them from re-entering SA for five years, and had them deported,” he said.

Another 6,455 travellers were denied entry after being declared undesirable.

These included people who had committed crimes in other countries and featured on the Interpol red list.

In addition, 4,626 were refused entry for reasons such as invalid passports, fraudulent visas, or failure to produce a valid yellow fever certificate when required.

A total of 27,005 individuals were deported.

Another challenge, Masiapato said, was illegal migrants entering the country via public transport.

“During this period, we imposed about 98 administrative fines to various conveyancers especially bus companies to the value of R3,540,000 for transporting illegal migrants ... at the same time, we were able to collect about R9.8m in outstanding fines from about 25 bus companies,” he said.

Other successes included border guards arresting 246 criminals and confiscating four tube boats used to aid illegal migrants cross rivers into SA, and the confiscation of various drugs.

Border guards set up more than 450 roadblocks within a 10km radius of popular entry ports, and health specialists screened just under 1.5-million travellers for various infectious and communicable diseases.

“We have started now and we are still new — we have been going only for about two months — so we are asking South Africans to assist and support us,” Masiapato said.