Namibia: Judge Orders Training for Home Affairs Officials

Source: The Namibian (Windhoek), 03/04/2018

The Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration must design a training
programme for its officials whose duties include the enforcement of
the Immigration Control Act, Windhoek High Court judge Shafimana
Ueitele has ordered.
The ministry`s permanent secretary and chief immigration officer must
also design programmes that would help the ministry monitor the
detention of alleged illegal immigrants in Namibia, and should have
training programmes on the Immigration Control Act in place by no
later than the end of September this year, judge Ueitele further
ordered in a judgement delivered last Thursday.
In addition, judge Ueitele directed that nobody who has not been
trained or is not conversant with the provisions of the Immigration
Control Act be permitted to exercise any powers under the law after
the end of November.
Judge Ueitele made the order at the end of a case in which Ombudsman
John Walters sued the minister of home affairs and immigration, the
home affairs ministry`s chief of immigration, the immigration
tribunal, the minister of safety and security, the Inspector General
of the Namibian Police, and the station commanders of the Windhoek,
Katutura, Wanaheda and Seeis police stations over the illegal
detention of nearly 50 people accused of being unlawfully in Namibia.
Walters lodged an urgent application about the detention of 46
alleged illegal immigrants in the Windhoek High Court in February
last year. With the Ombudsman questioning the legality of the
immigrants` detention, who were held in custody in police cells in
Windhoek and at Seeis, a government lawyer conceded that they were
detained unlawfully, and judge Ueitele ordered their release in
February last year.
Walters informed the court in an affidavit that investigators from
his office discovered that the 46 detainees - most hailing from
Angola, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya - were
being detained under warrants that were not signed, that no warrants
authorising the detention of some of the detainees could be found,
and that no warrants for the detention of several detainees had been
issued after the 14-day detention period authorised by initial
warrants had passed.
Walters also charged that immigration officials who had the 46
detained without the authorisation required by law, had no regard for
the constitutional rights of the detainees, and appeared to be a law
unto themselves.
In answering affidavits by two immigration officers, which were also
filed in court, it was admitted that there was a lack of proper
administration in the Directorate of Immigration and Border Control
and that immigration officers were not able to keep track of all
alleged illegal immigrants detained, because the directorate did not
have a proper record-keeping system.
That revelation by the immigration officers was `a shocking exposure
of the institutional incompetence` of the Ministry of Home Affairs
and Immigration, judge Ueitele commented in his judgement. That
incompetence led to infringements of people`s constitutional rights,
exposed Namibia`s government to claims for damages, and also put the
national security of the country at risk, he said.
Judge Ueitele concluded that the unlawful detention of the 46
detainees was not motivated by malice on the part of individual
immigration officials, but was the result of institutional failures
in the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration. As a result of that
finding, he decided not to order the immigration officials
responsible for the detention of the 46 to pay the Ombudsman`s legal
costs in the matter, but instead ordered the minister of home affairs
and immigration and the other respondents to bear the Ombudsman`s
legal costs.
Lawyers Yoleta Campbell and Norman Tjombe represented the Ombudsman
in the matter. Government lawyer Sylvia Kahengombe represented the
respondents.