South Africa will begin charging foreign governments for the cost of deporting their nationals who violate immigration laws, in a policy shift signaling a tougher stance on undocumented migration and mirroring hardline approaches seen in the United States under President Donald Trump.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) confirmed the plan as the government steps up immigration enforcement amid rising anti-immigration sentiment, protests against undocumented foreign nationals and pressure to tighten border control.
In an interview with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), DIRCO spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said the government believes countries have sufficient capacity to manage the return of their nationals, making it reasonable to recover associated costs.
“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. At least now we can see that there’s capacity for countries to extract the foreign nationals who have fallen foul of the law,” said Phiri.
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