Closing the holes and the loopholes

On Tuesday, when Yaakov Ganot, head of the Population Administration in the Interior Ministry, heard the announcement of Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, of Yisrael Beiteinu, that, starting in July, entire families of illegal foreign workers would be arrested, for the purpose of deportation, he was quite upset. After all, the Immigration Police had been disbanded and the authority to arrest foreign workers lies solely with the new Population, Immigration and Border Authority. The new authority, established and headed by Ganot, is composed entirely of Interior Ministry employees. Starting in July, illegal foreign workers were to be subject to arrest by immigration inspectors, not police officers. And the only one with the authority to make a decision about detention of families would be Ganot, and that wasn't about to happen in July, he says: "We'll allow a month for people to get things together and anyone who isn't legal will have to leave. After that, if we arrest adults, they will have to take their children with them. The children do not extend protection to their parents."

Ganot said something similar in late 2002, at the start of an operation launched by the Immigration Administration to encourage illegal workers to leave of their own accord. Ganot established the administration that ran the Immigration Police, and headed it at the time. Some months ago, he dismantled that administration and established the new authority, which he now heads. This authority is meant to coordinate all the handling of foreign workers, from protection of their rights vis-a-vis their employers (previously, this fell under the purview of the Ministry of Industry and Trade), to the arrest of illegal residents (formerly done by police), and through deportation. It will also deal with refugees and asylum seekers, on questions regarding identification, examination of requests and issuing of recommendations (things that up to now were handled by the UN High Commissioner on Refugees).

The situation has changed since the time Ganot established the Immigration Police. For one, today there is a detention facility where it is not at all uncommon for families with small children to be held, something that was inconceivable back then. Meanwhile, the clear division between legals and illegals has also been blurred, with the entry of about 20,000 asylum seekers from Sudan and Eritrea, who cannot be deported.

A week and a half from now, immigration inspectors will deploy in the center, the north, the south and Jerusalem. Ganot declines to cite a number but promises that "there will be many arrests. The prisons today are empty. Ketziot is at 50 percent capacity. The [goal of the] action has to be thousands of deportees in the next six months. Many thousands. We'll do all we can to justify the unit's founding."

He wishes to calm the fears of those who fear a repeat of the kind of scenes associated with the Immigration Police in his day - of brutal chases and raids in the middle of the night. "We want to carry out arrests or deportations on the basis of intelligence, and not by combing the main streets. Our wish is for [illegals] to leave of their own accord," he says, and immediately adds: "But, the kind of thing you find nowadays in Tel Aviv, where illegal workers and infiltrators can just go about freely, this has to stop."

A few of them, he warns, pose a security risk. "We are aware, on a basic level, of foreigners who left their countries and then spent years in enemy states: Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Somalia. Examinations into the matter have shown that some have a problematic past, security-wise." About others, he says: "They are illegal residents and they also work illegally. They send the money home, live in horribly crowded conditions, and also give Israel a bad name, because they live in such poor conditions. A hundred people in a moldy shelter, 20 people in one apartment. They're exploited because the employers know that they're illegal. Despite this, they're still scraping by making a living, but at the same time, they're not going to be lovers of Israel because they're hunted. I think that if it's legal, it's legal, and if not, they should leave the country."

The big innovation is in the area of work with refugees and asylum seekers. Seventy people have been recruited for the new unit. Thirty have undergone special training, which has been praised by the human rights organizations that assist refugees, and from now on they will be the ones conducting interviews, examining requests and making recommendations as to who rightly deserves refugee status. "In our examinations, I would say that 99.9 percent of them are here for work. They're not asylum seekers, they are not at any risk," says Ganot.

The Eritreans and Sudanese are asylum seekers. They've come here and requested asylum.

Yaakov Ganot: "Just because they've requested it, that doesn't mean anything. Georgians are also making such requests, and so are Turks. Nothing is happening in southern Sudan. They didn't come to us from Sudan. They come from Egypt, where they heard there's a chance to make money in Israel. In all of our interrogations - and we're the ones who question them when they cross the border - they tell us in the clearest way possible, before receiving any briefings here: 'We're looking for work.' Plain and simple. No danger involved."

The Eritreans, too? According to UN statistics, more than 90 percent of them are eligible for refugee status on the basis of the Geneva Convention, as victims of religious and political persecution.

"I don't know what your information is based on. I do know that big Great Britain, little Malta and also Egypt have returned refugees to Eritrea. The Eritrean ambassador met with me and he said, 'Tell me, sir: If you had army deserters, what would you do with them?' I said, 'I'd put them in jail.' He said, 'They're deserters. It's not right that instead of returning them to Eritrea, you keep them here.'"

He forgot to mention what is known to the UN, that prison there includes torture.

"It doesn't matter, because in any event we don't return the Eritreans or the Sudanese."

The Eritreans complain that they're not allowed to submit requests for asylum. Will you accept requests from them?

"We don't send them back, so why do they need that official recognition right now? I'm ready to examine requests on one condition - that if someone is deemed ineligible, there is someone to guarantee that he returns to Eritrea. If that were the case, on the spot we would take them with immediate priority, all the Eritreans. And those for whom there is a chance of sending back would be checked first."

'Atmosphere of intimidation'

Attorney Anat Ben-Dor, who heads the refugee rights program at Tel Aviv University law school, contends that the biggest problem is in the initial categorization and the renewal of permits done by the Interior Ministry at the absorption center in Lod. She avers, based on testimony from asylum seekers, that "an atmosphere of intimidation and threats prevails there. The refugees are shouted at, and told that their documents are fake. They wait for hours and hours, often to come away with nothing. It's a disgrace the way the place is run. And as long as that's the entry point, it makes no difference how talented the people who do the interviews are."

Ganot completely rejects these claims. There is a permanent UN presence in Lod, he says, and the complaints filed by Ben-Dor were examined and found to be unsupported. "The Interior Ministry workers there are doing holy work," he says. "They work under tremendous pressure from the people who come seeking permits. There are people who defecate in the waiting rooms, who attack and bite. You won't find this anywhere else in the world - an asylum seeker, a refugee foreign worker, attacking the clerks."

Ganot does not engage in fiery rhetoric, but he does think that the goal of reducing the number of people entering Israel through Egypt does also justify harsh measures such as restricting the movement of asylum seekers to areas north of Hadera and south of Gedera, that is, outside of the Tel Aviv area (not including Eilat, and Arad may also soon be excluded from this map). "One factor behind the increase in arrivals is Tel Aviv," he explains. "When a Sudanese arrives here and goes to work cleaning houses, he makes pretty good money. He doesn't pay income tax, or health tax. They live 20 people to a room. That's [an income of] two thousand dollars. It pains me, too, when I see them in such wretched conditions, but on the other hand, we've reached a situation in which 1,680 people arrived in one month alone, when our entire aliya [Jewish immigration to Israel] is 14,000 people per year. As soon as we decided, and all the ministers accepted my recommendation, which was approved by the interior minister, to legally prohibit them from the area between Gedera and Hadera, an amazing thing happened: Within two months, the number fell to just 300-400 a month. Those with children were given time to finish school, we helped in the exceptional cases, and we didn't touch the Darfuris. There are 2,000 Eritreans who've been granted status by us that allows them to be in Tel Aviv and to work. We didn't hurt anyone, but we said, No more."

Are work permits being granted in keeping with the Gedera-Hadera borders?

"They can work there. The illegals, too. I issue the directives and I know that they're not going to make a living out of thin air. We don't enforce it. But no one has complained that they're not being allowed to work. They're upset about one thing only: That they can't be in Tel Aviv, make a lot of money to send home, sit here and cry."

The ease with which the border can be crossed disturbs him, and if it were up to him, this would change: "Today, they come in the evening, sit there along the border, wait for the IDF to send a vehicle. The IDF transports them to the camp next to Ketziot, where Interior Ministry clerks go over their identification and question them and admit them to Ketziot." He says that refugees are rarely returned to Egypt at the border: "A few months ago, there were 216 people, and since then maybe another one or two cases. We're involved, but it doesn't work."

What's needed in order to make it work?

"An order," he says. "A clear order."

Ganot, who heads the authority in charge of dealing with refugees, was surprised when asked if he planned on attending events in honor of World Refugee Day, which was observed in Israel on Friday. "Will there be illegals there?" he asked, and then immediately replied, "So how could I be there?"