• Home Affairs has embarked on an operation to use biometric technology to find illegal immigrants and deport them.
• Called “Operation: New Broom,” the first wave began in District 6 in Cape Town where 25 people were arrested.
• Coincidentally, the announcement made by Home Affairs reminded us of a certain science-fiction film centred around aliens in South Africa.

As if from a dystopian sci-fi, the Department of Home Affairs is sending officials to impoverished areas and taking the biometrics of people in order to find out if they are illegal immigrants or not. If found to be illegal, these people will be arrested and later deported.

The Minister of Home Affairs is calling the initiative “Operation: New Broom,” part of a wider digital transformation initiative taking place at Home Affairs.

“The first operation of what will be an ongoing nationwide campaign took place in District 6 in Cape Town, where 25 suspects were arrested while occupying land meant for restitution to the victims of forced removals,” the department said in an announcement.

“Operation New Broom tackles an old issue with new energy and technology in urban areas across the country.”

Equipped with biometric technology, Home Affairs officials went into District 6 to take the biometric identification data of people living in the region. If they were found to be illegal immigrants, likely by comparing their biometrics against a database, they would be detained. This sounded very familiar, but we couldn’t quite place where we may have seen something like it before.

The biometric scans and arrests were made in real-time, with 25 people detained after being exposed to the new technology. For those who haven’t seen the 2009 Neil Blomkamp classic, the film sees the South African government send officials into the fictional “District 9” to relocate aliens (from outer space called ‘Prawns’).

District 9 explores themes of humanity, forced relocations, social segregation, and xenophobia, which are still as relevant today as they were in 2009.

In the real world, the department says that Operation: New Broom “uses biometric technology to verify the immigration status of suspects, eliminating the risk of fraudulent documents and building stronger legal cases.”

“Operation New Broom is guided by our commitment to the rule of law. It is this commitment that both motivates us to do more to combat illegality, and to uphold due process and legal compliance in the process,” explained Minister Leon Schreiber.

“Our message to anyone who is in the country illegally, is clear: voluntarily deport yourself now, before we arrest and prohibit you from entering or obtaining legal status in South Africa in future.”