GO HOME: Police making sure a foreign worker boards a departing plane. (Haaretz Archives; Mo)

Compared to the thousands of other foreign workers expelled from Israel in recent months, the Nassiyas were lucky. The father was released on bail, thanks to the Hotline for Migrant Workers - they were able to file a complaint against the police, and they will not be deported until Justice Ministry investigators have taken their testimony.

This incident is one of many detailed in a new report prepared jointly by the Hotline and Kav La'Oved. The report, to be issued today, accuses the Immigration Police of employing extreme violence against foreign workers and depriving them of their legal rights. As the expulsion campaign picks up steam, the problems will only grow worse, the two nonprofit associations say.

It is not clear how many foreign workers have been expelled since the Immigration Police was established on September 1, 2002. Police say 40,000 have left the country, most of them voluntarily; the Interior Ministry says that some 12,000 deportation orders were issued. Recently, the cabinet decided to double its expulsion target for the year from 50,000 to 100,000.

According to the report, many of those deported were "illegals" only because the law does not permit them to leave their original employer. In some cases, the report says, workers were "traded" to a new employer by their original employer without realizing that the new employer was not legally permitted to employ them. In other cases, workers quit their original jobs because their employer never paid them. "The threat of expulsion further increases the power that this restrictive arrangement grants the employer," the report notes. "The worker has no power to complain of an unfair employer or to leave him without risking arrest and deportation."

There were also cases in which employers turned their own workers into the police - falsely claiming that they had run away and were therefore now illegal - in order to avoid having to pay them. One such case involved a Filipina who was caring for a disabled woman with four children. The administrative court judge who finally heard her case wrote: "It is not clear to me why a government agency lent its hand to such an arrest, which was essentially a `preventive arrest' by an employer who wanted the worker to stay with him until her replacement arrived."

Additionally, the report charges, many workers are deported without receiving all the wages they are due, since the Labor Ministry inspectors stationed in the prisons are instructed to ask the employer only for the worker's last salary and enough money to cover the plane ticket. These inspectors also demand that the workers sign Hebrew-language forms - which they usually do not understand - saying they have no outstanding claims against either the employer or the state. The administrative court has already ordered the police to stop making workers sign these forms, but apparently with little success.

Sometimes, the report adds, police have failed to bring workers who did manage to sue for their unpaid wages to their court appearances, or have even ignored court orders to delay the deportation until their case is heard.

With regard to police brutality, the report cites 43 cases in which workers filed complaints against the police because they broke doors or windows or because the workers' property was stolen during an arrest. In one such case, Das Magambiya said that his entire savings - $15,000 - disappeared when he was arrested. And since very few workers dare to complain, there are probably many more such cases, the report says.

Another problem, the report says, is that though workers are supposed to be given 72 hours in which to appeal their deportation, police sometimes bully them into signing a waiver of their right of appeal and then deport them before the 72 hours are up. Often, police do not even inform the workers that they have a right of appeal.

Workers who do manage to appeal are often still denied due process, the report says, because most hearings are conducted without a translator. Furthermore, the three administrative court judges are terribly overburdened, sometimes hearing more than 70 cases a day. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to give each worker a fair hearing.

In response, the Immigration Police noted that there are currently "more than 250,000 foreign workers in Israel, more than half of them illegal. There are also more than 250,000 unemployed persons. Since the establishment of the Immigration Police, thousands [of these jobless] have returned to work ...

"It is easy to smear policemen, officers and inspectors who work night and day to deal with this social and economic wound, and for the first time to deal with crimes against those who have been neglected, oppressed, exploited and humiliated by Israeli employers and Israeli society. We are salvaging the image and honor of the state, which has neglected the stranger in its midst, and we condemn the behavior of policemen who deviate from this path. To date, 87 complaints have been looked into; we have already finished dealing with 65 ... We are surprised that this report was given to us only now, and by the media."