High Court Justice Edna Arbel issued an unusual temporary injunction Sunday preventing the deportation of minors residing in Israel illegally and unaccompanied by family or other adults.

The injunction was issued in response to a petition by the Hotline for Migrant Workers and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, which argued that deporting minors who are unaccompanied by family or guardians violates the basic principle of the child's best interest.

According to attorneys Yonatan Berman and Oded Feller, who authored the petition, the deportation of "unaccompanied foreign minors" must be prohibited until the state takes a number of actions regarding each child: examining whether the child is in need of aid; determining that deportation is the most appropriate method for advancing the child's welfare; coordinating the deportation with the absorbing country "to the last detail"; determining to whom specifically the minor will be handed over; determining that that person will also act "solely to ensure the minor's best interest."

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The petition was filed with the High Court in haste, after human rights organizations learned that the state intended to deport a group of African minors within days, without coordinating the deportation with the absorbing countries or taking steps to ensure their welfare after the deportation.

The petitioners stressed that they are not petitioning on behalf of specific minors, but rather on behalf of all unaccompanied minors residing illegally in Israel, because only a small fraction of such minors turned to the organizations for help.

"The population referred to by the petition is one of the weakest," wrote Berman and Feller. "The minors are in Israel alone, and were arrested shortly after arriving in Israel. They do not speak Hebrew, do not know their rights and have no financial ability to fund legal or other action, although it is clear that Supreme Court rulings on appeals and petitions will affect them as well."

The unaccompanied minors number several dozen, 13 of which are 14- to 17-year-olds from Guinea, Nigeria and Sudan who are being held in the Immigration Police's Michal detention facility and have already been served with detention orders. A few other minors are being held in Ma'asiyahu Prison, while others are not being held in detention.

In recent days, immigration authorities were able to overcome the bureaucratic hurdles that had prevented the deportation of 13 African minors back to Guinea. Due to the lack of diplomatic relations between Israel and Guinea, Israeli authorities had been unable to issue the minors the necessary travel documents. Roughly two weeks ago, three Guinea police representatives arrived in Israel along with a representative of an international immigration organization in Guinea in order to issue these documents. Immigration Police paid the Guinea representatives $50 for each document.