South Africa- The Border Management Authority (BMA) has reported that it has arrested more than 1,000 undocumented migrants at the Beitbridge border between South Africa and Zimbabwe over the Easter weekend.

The arrested include Zimbabweans, Malawians, and other Central African nationals.

BMA attributed these arrests to their operations using drones.

Earlier in April, the BMA and the Department of Home Affairs announced they’d procured four high-tech drones to combat illegal crossings at the country’s borders.

BMA head, Michael Masiapato, said that policing borders without drones was a costly task.

“A 1,000-plus people have been intercepted just in the past four days because of those drones. The most important thing that we are looking at implementing, we need to actually have a targeted approach where we identify the facilitators for this illegal migration issue and get them arrested.”
Masiapato detailed how drones were assisting in targeting illegal crossings at Beitbridge.

“In terms of here in Beitbridge, with the issue of the river here, we are able to see people being put into the boat and they are basically crossing the river with those individuals. So, what basically we do is we allow them to come through and as they come through we are able to send the coordinates to our border guards on the ground. And on that basis, they are able to go specifically to where those people are and we are able to get those people intercepted.”
-ewe.co.za