President Establishes Committee To Deal With Immigration Issues
PRETORIA, GAUTENG— The newly-established Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration announced a major multi-provincial crackdown, resulting in the arrest of over 40,000 illegal immigrants across South Africa since January 2026. The briefing followed a directive from the President to implement a five-point strategy aimed at managing irregular migration and restoring the rule of law.
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According to Justice and Constitutional Development Minister Mmamoloko Kubayi, the committee chairperson, the intensive law enforcement operations spanned the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal, and Gauteng, targeting business premises and residential estates to address immigration and labour law violations. Kubayi said during a press conference in Tshwane on 14 June 2026 that cabinet ministers confirmed that in the past month alone, the South African Police Service arrested more than 7,400 individuals under the Immigration Act, while an additional 143 people were detained for inciting violence.
Inter-Ministerial Committee on Migration increases law enforcement operations
The committee stated that the state holds the sole authority for managing immigration and warned citizens against performing illegal identity checks. Officials highlighted recent operations, including the arrest of 15 foreign nationals at a Mossel Bay construction site, as well as employers in Newcastle and Tshwane for hiring undocumented workers.
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The government is also collaborating with Malawi, Ghana, and Nigeria to facilitate repatriation processes, noting that 980 Malawians were recently deported from the Lindela Holding Directorate. To accelerate these processes, the Department of Home Affairs is working with the Department of Justice to re-establish a specialised court at Lindela within a month, alongside an immigration priority court at OR Tambo International Airport.
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Briefly News speaks to an expert
Professor Loren Landau, the South African Research Chair in Human Mobility and the Politics of Difference at the African Centre for Migration & Society at Wits University, weighed in on the committee's establishment.
"The state will never manage to stay within the law and arrest/deport the number of people the vigilantes demand. They are setting themselves up for failure," he told Briefly News.
Source: Briefly News
