Inside South Africa's battle against illegal migration
During the 2024/25 festive season, border guards screened millions of travellers and intercepted thousands attempting to enter South Africa illegally
Image: File
The Border Management Authority (BMA) announced in January that more than 50,000 people without passports were intercepted while attempting to enter South Africa during the 2024/25 festive season, as law-enforcement agencies intensified operations at the country’s ports of entry.
As South Africa moved into the 2025/26 festive season, the BMA indicated that similar large-scale operations would again be implemented, with heightened deployment of border guards, technology and joint law-enforcement teams as part of ongoing efforts to curb illegal migration and cross-border criminal activity.
in January 2025, Minister of Home Affairs Dr Leon Schreiber, who chairs the inter-ministerial consultative committee on border management, and BMA Commissioner Dr Michael Masiapato briefed the media in Pretoria, outlining the impact of the festive-season deployment.
Masiapato said the BMA’s border guards conducted extensive operations over the holiday period, participating in 237 joint law enforcement operations, 3,252 vehicle patrols, and 4,477 foot patrols, as well as raiding 1,115 hotspot areas along key border corridors.
“During these operations, the border guards detected and apprehended about 58,394 individuals who were attempting to enter South Africa illegally. This is more than double the number of interceptions compared to the 27,005 of the 2023/24 festive period,” Masiapato said.
He attributed the sharp increase in detections to the expanded use of technology.
“This increase in interception can be attributed to the deployment of drones, which we borrowed from the Department of Agriculture, Land Reform and Rural Development,” he said.
Breakdown of the 58,394 intercepted individuals
According to Masiapato:
50,312 had no documents at all
6,159 were declared undesirables (people who had overstayed in South Africa)
1,923 were ruled inadmissible (invalid passports, fraudulent visas, or failure to present yellow-fever certificates)
All intercepted individuals were fingerprinted and banned from re-entering South Africa for five years.
Masiapato said that since the deployment of the first contingent of border guards in July 2022, the BMA has stopped and deported 468,000 individuals attempting to enter the country illegally.
Arrests and contraband seizures
Working with the South African Police Service, border guards arrested 322 travellers for various crimes, including:
possession of stolen vehicles
possession of contraband
drugs
illicit goods, including ferrous and non-ferrous metals
Of the 322 arrested individuals, 132 were already wanted for crimes committed inside South Africa.
During the 2024/25 festive period, border guards also:
intercepted 19 vehicles, two taxis, a truck, and two trailers that were being smuggled out of the country
contributed to a cumulative total of 331 vehicles stopped from leaving South Africa illegally since July 2022
Major commodity seizures
The BMA also recorded significant seizures of illicit goods during the festive-season operations:
R690 million worth of illicit cigarettes
900kg of dagga, valued at over R300,000, which was destroyed
Cannabis sticks worth R470,000, also destroyed
Alcohol valued at R100,000
Second-hand clothing worth R70,000
The BMA said the results demonstrate the growing capability of South Africa’s border-law-enforcement system, aided by improved technology, inter-agency cooperation and increased personnel deployment.
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