**Abstract**

The problem of migration into the Republic of South Africa took shape at the dawn of democracy and it has since then become overly complex to manage. South Africa has witnessed an unprecedented, undocumented population over the past three decades. The illegal migrants are economic migrants who enter the republic illegally for greener pastures. There are possible repeat deportees commonly known as the "revolving door" syndrome. The number of repeat deportees and the reasons for their continuous return is not known. The deportation process is currently faced with numerous challenges of re-entry after deportation and serious budget cuts to fulfil the mandate. This has significant impacts on the management of deportation in the country. This chapter provides various aspects of immigration and deportation from a South African context and also identifies challenges faced to manage the deportation of illegal immigrants.

**Keywords:** asylum seekers, corruption, fraudulent entry, social networks

### **1. Introduction**

There is only a small percentage of the world's population that live outside their countries of birth or origin, but migration is still an important phenomenon on the political agenda of some countries. The movement of people across borders is a potential problem for almost all countries as it is nearly impossible to completely control immigration flows. The management of deportation is a mandatory function of the Department of Home Affairs (DHA) in the Republic of South Africa in terms of Section 34 of the Immigration Act 13 of 2002 as amended [1]. The DHA has two core businesses which are civic services and Immigration Services (IMS). Deportation management falls under the branch of IMS. IMS has further three business units namely, Port Control, Permitting (Visas), Asylum Seekers Management and Inspectorate. Inspectorate is established in terms of Section 33 of the Immigration Act 13 of 2002 as amended. The management of deportation is one of the functions of the Inspectorate, which is the law enforcement arm of the department [2]. The responsibility of the inspectorate is to comply with the Immigration Act. It is the responsibility of the deportation directorate to deport Illegal Foreigners (IFs) who are detected and arrested for contravening the Immigration Act.
