The state is continuing to deport illegal foreign workers despite the objections of aid groups: Two Filipina women were arrested Thursday and placed in Ben-Gurion International Airport's detention facility with their young children. They are scheduled to be flown back to the Philippines on Monday.
Both came to Israel legally to work as home health care aides, but lost their visas after giving birth, an NGO spokesman said.
One of the women's children, an 18-month-old child, is the son of a Turkish asylum seeker who is legally living in Israel, the spokesman said. The father's name appears on the child's birth certificate and the parents are registered as living at the same South Tel Aviv address, the spokesman added.
Immigration police said the father's name was not on the birth certificate, but aid groups offered documents purporting to refute that claim.
A representative of the Population and Immigration Administration said in response that at first the woman claimed she had no documentation and then produced a birth certificate that lacked the father's name.
"The mother's official documents and investigation findings do not mention the child's father. We don't know where other documents came from that are inconsistent with the mother's.
"It is also strange that the father submitted an asylum request in his name alone, without mentioning the mother or child. To remove any doubt on the matter, a father is not a defense for the mother and child."
The organization Physicians for Human Rights criticized the government's conduct in the case, saying: "The State of Israel continues to treat individuals it brought to the country as disposable slaves that can be expelled and deported after they have fulfilled their function."
