South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs has opened a tender for 600 handheld biometric devices that will let immigration officials verify a person’s legal status on the spot, without checking a passport or permit.
The devices will let inspectors capture fingerprints and facial images in the field and get an immediate match against the department’s records, closing a gap that has long allowed forged or borrowed documents to slip through immigration checks.
The tender, which closes on July 24, forms part of a new Biometric Case Management System that the department is building for its inspectorate directorate.
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According to the tender notice, the successful bidder will help Home Affairs enable real time biometric verification, data capture and integration with existing systems, with the goal of making it easier to identify and manage illegal migration cases. The contract will run for 36 months, with an option to extend for a further two years.
Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber first flagged the plan in May, saying handheld devices would let officials access departmental systems remotely and get an instant response on a person’s immigration status. He argued the technology would increase arrests of people found to be in the country illegally, since officers would no longer need to rely on paperwork that could be falsified.
The approach has already been tested. In a pilot run in Cape Town’s District 6, officials used biometric scanners to match suspects against Home Affairs records, leading to the arrest of 25 people believed to be undocumented foreign nationals.
That operation, part of a wider enforcement campaign the department has dubbed Operation New Broom, relied on fingerprint and facial scans carried out during raids rather than a review of physical documents.
The rollout comes as deportations climb sharply. Home Affairs has reported a 46 percent increase in inland deportations at the start of July, which it credits to improved technology at the Border Management Authority, and more than 53,000 people had been processed for deportation or voluntary repatriation by July 11.
Immigration enforcement has become one of South Africa’s most politically charged issues, with anti immigration groups pressuring the government to act more aggressively against undocumented migrants.
The new devices build on work already under way inside the department.
Since April 2024, Home Affairs has been feeding biometric data from people arrested on immigration grounds into its Automated Fingerprint Identification System, helping officials flag repeat offenders and people who had previously been deported. Putting that capability into a handheld device simply moves the check out of the office and into the field, so an officer can confirm someone’s status within seconds during a stop or raid.
Even so, the system’s success will depend on more than the hardware itself.
The technology assumes Home Affairs records are accurate, current and reachable wherever officials are working, and outdated data or connectivity failures could lead to people being wrongly questioned or held. Labour groups have also raised concerns about privacy and data protection, along with staffing shortages that could limit how effectively the devices are used once they arrive.
Buying scanners is the easier part of the equation. Whether South Africa’s detention centres, tribunals and deportation processes can keep pace with faster identification is the test that will determine whether the investment pays off.
