By Lavern de Vries

Refugees sleeping outside the Department of Home Affairs have been given until Tuesday night to find alternative accommodation or they may face arrest.

But they have vowed to stay put because they feared losing their early places in the queue and said they risked arrest anyway if they moved about the city without papers.

Monday night Makgonye Maphile, the Department of Public Work's regional security manager, met about 50 refugees to plead with them to sleep elsewhere.

"It is not safe for you to sleep outside here. We know refugees make fires outside the building and those fires could engulf the building and the state's assets," he said.

Maphila said the area had become an eyesore with cardboard boxes, sleeping bags and blankets covering the tarmac.

Although the group of refugees said they understood his concerns, many said they would rather face arrest than leave the premises.

"The queues are already long; if we leave we will be at the back of the queues," a refugee said.

In response Maphila said he sympathised with the group as well as the beleaguered Department of Home Affairs, which he said was understaffed.

Other refugees said they feared being deported.

"With Operation Umbrella under way we might be arrested when we try to go to shelters because we don't have papers," one of the group said.

Since the launch of Operation Umbrella last week, about 150 asylum-seekers have been arrested in the Western Cape. The R800 000 campaign aims to "deal with people who have contravened the Immigration Act by being in this country illegally".

The initiative has alarmed many Zimbabwean asylum-seekers who are afraid of being deported for fear of what might happen to them on their return to Zimbabwe.

"My children lie to the militia who check up on residents. They say I have gone to the rural areas.

"If I return I must also lie because if I tell the truth and say I came to South Africa looking for a job to feed my family, they might kill me," said a Zimbabwean, who declined to be named.

"If you sleep here to get your papers, you are in trouble; if you have no papers you are in trouble."

Maphila reiterated that refugees would be allowed on the Home Affairs premises from 4h30am.

Braam Hanekom, chairperson of the People Against Suppression, Suffering, Oppression and Poverty (PASSOP), said the group would try to find accommodation at community or school halls and would try its best to transport people back to the offices in time to stand in the queues.

Meanwhile, the body of Adonis Musati, a refugee who died, allegedly of hunger, outside the building recently, will be expatriated on Tuesday.