A family of Filipino foreign workers will be deported from Israel on July 23 and
will be released from detention until the day of their deportation, the Petah
Tikva District Court ruled on Monday.
The court’s decision follows a
campaign on behalf of protesters who petitioned the court following the arrest
of six-year-old AJ and her parents on Sunday morning, the first day of her
summer break. The petition, submitted by the NGO Israeli Children, called on
immigration authorities to set the family free from the detention facility at
Ben- Gurion Airport, and to allow them time to prepare for deportation. AJ had
already been released Sunday night following an appeal to the court, but
Sunday’s court decision means both of her parents will be set free until their
deportation date.
In the court protocol, Judge Avraham Yaakov said that
AJ, who studied at Bialik-Rogozin school in south Tel Aviv, “has known her
entire life only in Israel; she speaks Hebrew, she has friends and family here,
and while I agree that the interior minister has the authority to deport illegal
residents from Israel, it must be done in a fitting manner.”
The
petitioners did not appeal the deportation itself, which fits the criteria that
the government approved in August 2010. The petitioners merely appealed the
holding of the family in detention until their deportation, an appeal that the
court said also met the approval of the Interior Ministry.
The criteria
include that the children’s parents entered Israel legally, they have been in
Israel for over five years and are enrolled in the Israeli school system, among
others. AJ, whose parents’ work visas expired in 2004, did not fit the criteria
at the time the decision was made, and has since faced the threat of
deportation. According to immigration officials, the family never
submitted an appeal to request legal status in Israel after their permits
expired.
Under the criteria passed in August 2010, around 1,200 children
were made subject to deportation, while parents of another 701 children
submitted residency claims.
One of the petitioners, Tami Gordon of
Israeli Children, is quoted in the protocol as saying how AJ’s parents “lost
their work permits, fell in love, brought children into the world, and don’t
need to be blamed for this. I am asking that you give her this vacation, the
last in her life, because in the Philippines she won’t have this sort of school
break, and the Interior Ministry can understand this.”
Rotem Ilan, also
of Israeli Children, said “we are happy that the courts also understand that a
child’s place is not in prison,” and criticized the state for “bringing so many
foreign workers to Israel and choosing to look at them as just objects and not
human beings.”
On Sunday night, dozens of protesters held signs and
chanted outside Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar’s house in Tel Aviv, asking him
to intervene on behalf of AJ.