South Africa to charge Nigeria, others for deportation costs

South Africa announced a new policy to charge foreign governments for the deportation costs of their nationals who violate immigration laws. The Department of International Relations and Cooperation stated the government will seek to recover expenses incurred in detaining and deporting foreign nationals.

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Moving forward, we will also be billing countries for their foreign nationals who have to be deported or who are in our criminal detention facilities and have to be deported back into their countries.

This initiative comes as part of a renewed crackdown on undocumented migrants, with South African authorities reporting over 100,000 deportations in the past two years, placing a significant financial burden on the state. The policy intends to shift this cost to the countries of origin for citizens who break South African immigration laws.

"Moving forward, we will also be billing countries for their foreign nationals who have to be deported or who are in our criminal detention facilities and have to be deported back into their countries," the department said. This measure follows recent repatriation exercises by Nigeria and Ghana, which evacuated hundreds of their citizens from South Africa.

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At least now we can see that there’s capacity for countries to extract the foreign nationals who have fallen foul of the law. That’s something that, through the Department of Home Affairs, we will pursue as a government.

President Cyril Ramaphosa's administration is intensifying efforts to identify and deport undocumented foreign nationals. Authorities maintain that enforcing immigration laws is a matter of national sovereignty and defend deportations as lawful and necessary. The proposed cost-recovery measure is expected to spark discussions among African governments regarding migration management.

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I must make it clear that only the authorised government officials may act against violations of the law, including violations of our immigration laws.