Last Tuesday, 7 P.M., Ben-Gurion International Airport, the headquarters of the Immigration Authority, Center District: The Zafrir Force goes into action. Chief Inspector Zafrir Ovadia, an intelligence officer, is the senior commander, assisted by Amitai Sharabi and Dror Kuzaro, who are both intelligence coordinators from the Coastal Plain District. "Okay, guys, let's move out," Ovadia says. The convoy gets organized, led by a police car driven by Ovadia. He is followed by two white minibuses with bars on the windows, in which the detainees will be transported, or "mobiled," as the unit describes it. Then come three more regular cars. Fourteen "enforcement policemen," most of them wearing civilian clothes, enter the vehicles when the word is given.

Just before they set out, there's an opportunity to give them a once-over: young men and women in their early twenties, well built, from elite army reconnaissance units, former Border Police and the like. This time, because of the media presence, the spokeswoman, Chief Superintendent Orit Friedman, is also here. There are also four officials from the Interior Ministry, who are also young and have their own car. All told, the force consists of 21 men and women. Tonight's plan is to arrest, ahead of deportation, about 50 foreign workers who are living in Kiryat Ekron, Moshav Sitriya - both near Rehovot - and Ramle.

We're off. We travel behind the vehicle of the senior commanders. Chief Inspector Zafrir Ovadia, 36, a former detective, investigator and head of a special investigations team, is telling the others, via the radio, to stop at Bilu Junction. The first target: 29 Shabazi Street in Kiryat Ekron, a private dwelling which, according to intelligence information, is home to several foreign workers whose visas have expired.

The vehicles surround the house. The members of the force are trained and proficient, having worked together for the past few months. Ovadia and Sharabi emerge first, followed by the other policemen and policewomen, moving quickly. Within seconds, in total silence, the building is surrounded. No one will escape from here this evening.

They knock politely on the door. The tenants open up without thinking much. "Mishtara! Police! Police!" someone from the force calls out, the last two words spoken in English. A hefty man, his upper body bare and his arm tattooed, stands at the entrance. His eyes register surprise. The scent of French fries wafts out of the kitchen - they were just about to have supper - but within seconds, the general stench that emanates from the place overpowers all else. The further inside we go, the more powerful the stench becomes

The place is filthy. Objects are thrown haphazard all over: clothing, tools, food. There is a smell of alcohol. The floor is damp, water is leaking from somewhere. There's a smell of sewerage, mold and a terrible stuffiness. Another man emerges from behind. He's tall, almost gigantic and older. Both of them seem to be in their forties. Neither of them says a word. They stand and watch in stunned amazement as the police entourage invades and gradually takes over their house.

Part of the humanity

Everything is done with determination. Itai and Amos burst ahead into the far room. Shimon and Lior take the side room. Shahar and Eli make for the third room. "One, two," they shout to one another. They check every door, every closet, to make sure there are no more tenants. "Passport! Passport!" the other police command the tenants in English.

Ovadia tells one of the policemen to go with a tenant and shut off the gas. "You have to pay attention to that kind of thing," he says. "In all the fuss we could forget the fire burning on the stove and there could be a disaster, heaven forbid. We are now responsible for these people and for their well-being."

One of the foreign workers mumbles something in Russian. Two men and a woman are discovered in a tiny space, which is actually a porch that they closed. Uzbeks. Bed abuts bed, clothes hanging on the walls. Shocking squalor. "Woman," Itai calls out. Sharon and Liat, who had been standing in the entrance, writing something, hurry over. "If there's a woman, we always send a girl to her," Ovadia explains. "That's part of the humanity."

The woman is dazed. The man next to her steps out of the porch space. "Passport! Visa!" Dror demands. They start riffling through their papers, showing documents of two types: tourist visas that expired months before, or false papers that cynical employers gave them. The police do an inventory: four men and a woman. Two from Uzbekistan, two from Kazakhstan. The woman is also Uzbek. The men worked as house painters or in renovations, something like that; the woman was a cleaner.

They call the Interior Ministry. All five workers are "illegally present." It's an easy decision: Everyone is arrested. The tenants are concentrated in one room. They try unsuccessfully to say something. It turns out that no one in the room speaks their language. Communication is via sign language and with the use of universal words such as "passport," "visa," "tourist." The woman is distraught, shaking her head in despair, talking to one of the policemen. But he doesn't understand a word.

The law that governs entry into Israel stipulates: "The detainee shall be given a copy of the deportation order in his language and his rights shall be explained to him, including his right to inform his family, a lawyer and the consul-general of his country about his arrest." None of this happens. The tenants are asked to pack their things in the only language available to the police: "Hello, do baggage," "Hey, make baggage now," "Hello, auntie, do baggage, do baggage."

Having no other choice, they start to throw things into large bags. Tools are forbidden. The policewoman Liat shows them: This, no. This, no. This, yes. In fact, only clothes are allowed. They don't have many valuables, but some of them have been here a few years and have accumulated some belongings. They are helpless in the face of the demand to put everything they will be taking home into one or two bags within a few minutes. What they leave behind, they will never see again.

What will happen to items such as a television set, a stereo, tapes, pictures, small chests of drawers they bought, a cupboard, the washing machine? Chief Inspector Ovadia replies with total seriousness: "At the moment they can't take those things. But they will tell their friends to send them the things later, in a shipping container."

What about workers who are owed money by their employers? Or who are involved in court proceedings and all manner of unfinished business? "They will get a hearing this very night," Ovadia promises. "There are people there from the Ministry of Labor. Every report like that will be documented and checked. No one will be sent in a situation like that. And the proceedings will be carried out to the end. It's my responsibility."

They are taken with their bags and suitcases to the commercial vehicle with the barred windows. They are not handcuffed. There is no need for handcuffs. They do what they are told. They are submissive, neutralized, like wild animals caught under the glare of a searchlight that are rooted to the spot. Waiting in the large vehicle is the policewoman Liran, whose job it is to watch over the detainees. The house was emptied of its occupants within minutes. The French fries are still on the table.

"Don't worry, they'll get a sandwich at the terminal, and there is a coffee and hot chocolate machine, everything is all right. They won't go hungry," Ovadia says. "Our policy is to meet them halfway wherever possible. To keep up humanity. In another few hours, after the hearing that they will each get, in the prison, they will also get a hot meal." The spokeswoman corrects Ovadia in a scolding tone: "Holding facility, Zafrir, not prison. How many times do I have to remind you?"

Moral justification

In July, 2002, a government commission that was headed by Yuval Rachlevsky, the director of wages department in the Finance Ministry, examined the question of foreign workers in Israel, and recommended that the government establish an authority by 2004 that would concentrate all aspects of the issue, including deportations. The commission also recommended that 100,000 foreign workers who are in Israel without a visa be deported by 2005. A month later, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced a first target: the expulsion of 50,000 workers by the end of 2003. The moral justification for this, as expressed in official pronouncements and public service announcements: "The removal of foreigners who are working in Israel illegally, with the aim of encouraging [unemployed] Israelis to integrate into the workforce."

The enforcement policemen and senior officers recite that justification like a mantra. Chief Inspector Ovadia: "I have no problem with what we are doing, because I see in my mind's eye the family of the unemployed person with eight children who cried on my shoulder that foreign workers took his job. I am working to save him. By the way, I try not to deal with families, only with lone individuals. I am from intelligence. I don't deal in manhunts. I don't pick them up in the street. My method is based on intelligence information, an `apartment-focused system.' I like intelligence work and I have no problem. You should write: `I like what I do.'"

Amitai Sharabi: "What pangs of conscience? What in the world are you talking about? What we are doing is holy work. Every foreigner who is `mobiled' to a plane makes room for an unemployed Israeli who, heaven forbid, might even take his own life because of the situation. That is why I identify completely with what I am doing and I have no doubts about the rightness of the way. This is the right thing to do, it is proved in the field. I am certain of it."

As of this writing, no official body - governmental, statistical or other - has been able to present data showing the connection between a deported worker and an unemployed Israeli "who was saved." In any event, the task was given to the Israel Police. The national chief, Shlomo Aharonishky, accepted the challenge. With delight, say human rights groups. He allocated 400 policemen to the mission. With a generous budget of NIS 200 million from the treasury, he set up the Immigration Authority under police Major General Ganot, who was until then the commander of the Border Police. Since then (the beginning of September, 2002), the number of foreigners in Israel has decreased by 40,000. About a third of them were actually deported. Others, who witnessed a deportation in their milieu, took the hint and left on their own. A few thousand left during the period of fright before the Iraq war, and others left for a variety of reasons, as happens every year.

Two weeks ago Tuesday, a joint report was issued by two of the major organizations that are active in trying to protect the rights of workers from abroad in Israel: Kav La'oved, whose director is Hanna Zohar, and the Moked Hotline for Migrant Workers, managed by Sigal Rosen. The 20-page report is sharply critical of the mode of operation of the Immigration Authority. The organizations say that arrests are often accompanied by harsh violence, infringements of the law, breaches of human rights, cynical ties with employers and incitement to xenophobia (in television and radio public service announcements).

The report documents cases that suggest that the five people who were arrested last Tuesday in Kiryat Ekron were incredibly lucky. A few examples:

• On November 24, 2002, a Nigerian worker was hospitalized after being beaten by policemen who had come to arrest him. He had surgery on his knee and required stitches in his lips.
• On November 11, 2002, a policeman clashed with a Chinese worker during an arrest operation and stabbed him in the stomach with a penknife. The worker was hospitalized with damage to his liver. The policeman was fired and the Justice Ministry's Internal Affairs Department, which investigates suspected police wrongdoing, decided to file an indictment against him. That hasn't happened yet, but spokeswoman Friedman says the man will be formally charged within a few days.
• On March 17, 2003, a policeman broke the hand of Ghanaian citizen when he hit him with a truncheon.
• On April 22, 2003, policemen beat David Kofi Naseiya and his wife, Comfort, from Tel Aviv, who are both Ghanaian citizens in front of their five- and seven-year-old children when they came to arrest them prior to deportation. The father was taken to hospital and from there to Ma'asiyahu Prison. He complained to the Hotline.
• Last Sunday, at 4 A.M. policemen beat Lydia Ufoko, from Ghana, who lives on Salameh Street in Tel Aviv. She lost consciousness and was rushed to hospital. She says she was in an early stage of pregnancy and that on the way back to her house, she started to bleed and lost the baby. The case is being dealt with by both Kav La'oved and the Hotline, and following Haaretz's query, Major General Ganot decided to transfer the matter to Internal Affairs for investigation.

Pounding on the door at 4 A.M.

Last Wednesday, we met with two of the "cases," Lydia Ufoko and David Kofi, at Ufoko's place on Salameh Street. At 36, Ufoko looks worn out. She takes tranquilizers and bursts into tears every few minutes. Her husband, Samuel Donina, was arrested a few days before the incident and deported to Ghana. Two weeks earlier, she says, she told him that her period was significantly late and informed him that she was pregnant. According to her calculation, she was in the middle of her second month at the time of the police attack. Ufoko: "I woke up at four in the morning from pounding on the door. I was just about to open the door but they burst in and the door hit me and knocked me back. They smashed it with a hammer. And the wall, too. Look. Six policemen and one policewoman came into my room. They shouted, `Passport! Passport!' I was terribly scared. I urinated in my pants. I stood there in the puddle, shaking all over. They broke things, took down a trunk from the top of the cupboard, broke the wall. I had a rope here with laundry on it. They tore it. I told them I didn't have a passport because I was afraid they would take it for good. Then one policeman stood in front of me and slapped me. I shouted, `What are you doing? You will kill me.' And I passed out."

Rebecca, her sister-in-law and apartment mate: "I heard screaming. I came out and I saw Lydia lying on the floor in the hall, unconscious, with spittle coming out of her mouth. I knew she was at the start of pregnancy. She had told me. I started to scream for help. In the meantime, I saw the police taking out the couple that rents the third room. They wanted to take me, too. I showed them photographs of my two children, who were at my sister's. They left me alone. They were scared by Lydia's condition. They left her like that and got out. We called an ambulance. They took her to Ichilov [Hospital]. When she got back from the hospital she was bleeding badly. She was crying all the time and said, `Rebecca, I lost my baby.'"

The hospital report from the emergency room at Ichilov describes what happened to Ufoko as an "assault" and states that she sustained an "abdominal trauma." She did not tell the hospital about her pregnancy, she says, because she was incapable of talking there. When she was taken home by friends in a cab, she started to bleed and felt severe pains. The bleeding then became less intense but continued for a few days. She has no doubt that she experienced an abortion. At the time of our conversation, she had not yet decided whether to submit a complaint to Internal Affairs. She felt too enervated to initiate any kind of action.

Major General Yaakov Ganot stated in reaction that he has ordered the Tel Aviv unit of the Immigration Authority to investigate the police who were involved. The commanding officer told Ganot that they deny Ufoko's account. He has no reason to believe her and not his policemen, he said. However, after seeing the hospital report, he changed his mind and referred the matter to Internal Affairs at his initiative.

The police deserve a medal

David Kofi describes a similar series of events: "At 3:30 A.M. we heard a loud noise at the door. Before I managed to get out of bed they already broke it down. I was in a state of shock. I crawled under the bed. My wife was screaming. Our girls woke up and started to cry. A policeman told them to get down on the floor and get their father out. One policeman shouted, `Take the woman and the children to the porch.' They took them. They told me to give them my passport. My passport is now at the embassy for renewal. I told them that. One of them started to slap me on the face. He told me that if I don't give him the passport within two minutes, something very unpleasant would happen to me. I told them I didn't have it here and then the second policeman kicked me in the stomach. I started to throw up and I screamed. They handcuffed me and dragged me to the bed. I saw my wife was trying to run after us, but two policemen grabbed her and pinned her to the wall. One of them just sat on her so she couldn't move.
"They took me to their center in Holon. When I went to the bathroom I saw blood in my urine. They took me to the hospital. After I was treated they took me back to their jail. I was in jail for two weeks. Then they brought me to Judge Sarah Ben Shaul-Weiss [in the court that reviews cases of detained foreign workers]. I told her everything. She gave me a month for the Hotline to submit a complaint for me and so I would have time to organize the family in order to leave. I don't want to stay in this country anymore. As soon as I round up money, we are flying out. This time it ended like this. Next time they'll kill me."

The policemen involved in this incident denied the entire story to the police officer who questioned them about it. In any event, Ganot for some reason was not convinced that the case needed to be referred to Internal Affairs. Something about the story strikes him as false. "Do you buy that - that a father goes under the bed and leaves his girls like that?" Ganot reflects out loud. "I find it hard to believe this story. The instinct of parents is to hide their children, not themselves."

According to Sigal Rosen, of the Hotline for Migrant Workers, these are only two of many similar stories. There are dozens of cases that are not followed up in the form of a complaint to Internal Affairs. The majority of those who are affected don't dare file a complaint, making do instead with informing the organizations that assist them. "We have dozens of complaints about violence by policemen, but most of the workers are afraid that an official complaint will boomerang on them in some way."

One way in which employers take revenge on workers who submit complaints is to inform the Immigration Authority that the workers "escaped" from them. As for the Immigration Authority, it doesn't deal in nuances such as whether the "escapee" worker left in order to protect himself from an employer who locked him in a room and doesn't supply him with minimum human needs - or whether he was compelled to leave because he didn't get paid. The Immigration Authority labels everyone who leaves an "escapee" and from that moment he is on the list for rounding up and deportation.

Ganot, in response: "Never, never will any harm come to a foreign worker because he or she dared complain to the police. I am personally responsible for that. And there is no cooperation here, either. The fact is that we have opened 10,000 investigations against employers who were the subject of complaints."

Ganot offers statistics to back up what he says: In the nine months during which the Immigration Authority has been operating, a total of 83 complaints have landed on his desk. Of these, 53 were found to be unjustified, three were without evidence, one was not of interest to the public, and so on. Only 20 complaints meriting investigation were left, and they are now being dealt with. And this, he notes, is in comparison with about 41,000 workers who were deported. That's a tremendous achievement by any statistical yardstick. The police should get a medal, not a lethal report.

However, Kav La'oved and the Hotline present a totally different set of statistics. To begin with, 16,000 workers have been deported in this period, not 41,000, they say. This tallies with the Interior Ministry figure of 16,551 foreign workers who have been deported since November 7, 2001. All the others left for their own reasons. Ganot says, "it's true that this is the number who have been deported on the basis of legal orders," but a large part of the other 25,000 who left did so "because of our operations and because we encouraged them to go."

Second, the human rights organizations have received hundreds of complaints, some of them serious, about the work of the immigration police. These include dozens of complaints documenting police violence and physical abuse; dozens of complaints about doors being smashed, windows broken and damage caused to apartments and to the workers' private property; dozens of complaints about police breaking in to residences without showing a warrant; dozens of complaints about apartments from which all the valuables were stolen because they were left wide open when the occupants were arrested; and hundreds, perhaps thousands by now, of complaints of basic rights under the law being violated. Most of these complaints do not reach the police because the workers are afraid, Rosen says, but that doesn't change the picture: Many of the immigration police have cast off all restraint and the grave events are continuing to occur.

The Holocaust connection

Yaakov Ganot is personally offended by the report issued by Kav La'oved and the Hotline for Migrant Workers: "They are out to slander us by hook or by crook and are doing all kinds of manipulations and maneuvers," he says. "Take this report, for example. Why didn't they send me a copy?" Maybe because they don't work for you. They are human rights groups. But anyone can find the report. Why didn't you download it from the Internet? Ganot: "It's a matter of principle. I should have been the first to get a copy, don't you think? But, no. I have to hear about it from the media. They are doing it just to spite us. And you have to remember that if there were no foreign workers, their organizations wouldn't even exist. Their whole existence depends on the presence of the foreign workers here."

Ganot says he is very sensitive about the problematic nature of the mission that has been conferred on him. "Emotionally speaking, every day in this job is like a month in any other position I held in the police," he says. "This is an ungrateful task. You always come out as the bad guy who is persecuting these miserable people." Don't you think there is something to that description?

"No. We are not the bad guys in this story. But that's the nature of police work. And I want it to be clear that I identify with the goals and aims of the Immigration Authority. What I find hard is their implementation."

In other words, it's hard for you to deport them?

"Yes, I admit it. In all my years in the police, I never held such a sensitive position for which people are so ungrateful."

Ingratitude is a relative term, isn't it? What about the workers? The state brought them here, they made their contribution to the economy and now they are being kicked out. How are they supposed to feel?

"There was a limited number of workers who were brought here for 27 months and no more. But they saw that they had it good here, so they stayed. And tens of thousands came in their wake. We reached a figure of 300,000. That is not a situation the state can afford. We operate only against the illegals. We have no complaints against those who are here legally."

What exactly do you find difficult about the implementation?

"It's hard for me. The sights aren't easy. My heart aches for them. After all, they aren't offenders in the usual sense of the word. And there are a lot of cynical people and crooks who are exploiting them. I always remember that."

Why didn't you ask that someone else be appointed to the post if you're not comfortable with it?

"That is not an option. An officer of my status can either accept a post or take off his uniform and go home. The option I chose is to cope with the difficulty. And to do it with as much dignity and humanity as possible."

Could it be that there is no dignified and humane way to expel people whose only wrongdoing is terrible poverty that forced them to work in a far-off, strange land?

"There you go, that same image again. No matter what we do, we will never shake it off. There is a government policy, there is a decision. We are doing the job as well and as morally as possible, as a police force." Ganot is sensitive; he cannot abide the monstrous image. During the interview the word "Holocaust" was not even hinted at, until Ganot invoked it, at his initiative. "I am aware of the terrible and awful associations that the media is hinting at, and I am not willing to listen to them," he asserts, his voice suddenly rising. In a quieter tone, he reveals that his mother was a Holocaust survivor, from Transylvania. Two of his sisters perished in the Holocaust. The families of his mother and his father died in concentration camps. That has made him aware, moral and sensitive, he says. He is wholeheartedly convinced that the report of the two human rights groups is no more than an attempt at vilification and slander that has no foundation in reality. He is eager to prove it, too. And thus he allowed us even to enter the halls where the foreign-worker detainees are held at the airport in their last hours in Israel, before being "mobiled" to the plane.

The `dirty room'

The language of the Immigration Authority is rich and fraught with imagery. The "escapees" are concentrated in a "pre-sec-check [security check] hall," but the police who are stationed there call it the "dirty room," because at this stage the detainees have not yet been "cleaned" of belongings that are problematic in terms of security. After a rigorous security check they are transferred to the "clean room" and from there to the bus waiting outside that takes them to the plane on the tarmac.

We are greeted by Chief Superintendent Avihu Regev, who is in charge here. About 100 foreign workers, men and women, go by here every day on the way to the departing plane. You see, Regev boasts, they are sitting here comfortably, without handcuffs, getting humane treatment. There is a television set, air conditioning. We are not the monsters the papers make us out to be. Come and see. What I see is 30 people, most of them males, sitting on their bags and watching the National Geographic channel. It's showing a film urging the international community to save the world's seals. We move on to the clean room. There are another 30-something people here waiting for their flight. We are spotted by another chief superintendent, Yisrael Cohen, director of the "pre-flight terminal," who immediately joins the chorus of his predecessors' self-praise.

"You should know that on a scale of 10, we deserve a mark of nine or 10 for humanity and the good treatment they get," Cohen says. "The instruction to our policemen is that these are human beings, so treat them accordingly. That's how it is from start to finish. That's why we prefer to arrest them in their house and not on the street. That's why we make sure to assign women to the enforcement patrols. We see to their needs. Sandwiches. Drinks. An ATM to change money. There are toilets. They can talk on their mobile phones. It's a super-liberal approach. They are mobiled to the plane gently, with no violence and no handcuffs. Come and see for yourself." Can I talk to some of the detainees?

Cohen: "Sure, why not? It's a liberal, open approach."

Almost instantly we are surrounded by more than 10 detainees: Romanians, Poles, Bulgarians, a Hungarian. Those who speak English describe their troubles in that language; the others shout in their own language or in broken Hebrew.

Alexander from Romania: "I am owed $3,000. By who? By my employer, the cheat. They wouldn't listen to me, they wouldn't let me talk."

Michael: "I have a pregnant wife. In the house. In Tel Aviv. They grabbed me. They hit me, they didn't show consideration for anything." The man from Hungary: "They took my mobile phone, they wouldn't even let me make one call to tell my girlfriend. She is in shock, she doesn't know what happened."

Richard, from Romania: "They took my mobile phone. They don't let me call Romania to tell my family I am taken to jail. I asked to call on my phone, my expense, but they closed it and put it in a drawer. They grabbed me in the morning, on the street. Like a criminal. I begged. I said I have a wife at home, give me a few weeks to organize, to pack, and I will leave. They wouldn't listen."

Marina, from Poland: "They deported my husband and left me. I begged them to take me, too. They didn't care. Now I paid my own ticket."

Anna, 23, also from Poland: "I am pregnant. Don't feel good. I told them, give me another place. To lie down. I need water all the time, I feel bad. Nothing helped. I am five days in jail and here, with the noise and the mess. I feel very bad."

Cohen hears the accounts, and so does the spokeswoman, Friedman. They huddle for a moment about how to deal with this unpleasant Rashomon. Cohen finds a few Romanians who were permitted one phone call a few hours earlier, brings them to the front of the group and then asks everyone in a hectoring tone, "Here, in this room, didn't you get good treatment? Didn't you drink coffee? Didn't you get a sandwich? Didn't people talk to you like human beings? Huh?" They bow their heads. A few nod in assent.

Spokeswoman Friedman: "What they are doing is absurd. Now, a minute before boarding the plane,he remembers that he's owed $3,000? Where was he until now? If he had talked to the right person in the holding facility, and had insisted, the matter would have been dealt with. The same goes for those who weren't able to make a connection in the phone call that each of them is allowed. If they had approached Avihu or Yisrael again and again - I promise you that if they had insisted, they would have been given another call."

What kind of detained foreign worker will dare approach a senior police officer again and again and "insist"? Are you serious?

Friedman: "Completely serious. It's happened more than once. They know very well how to make demands."

Why are their mobile phones taken from them? Why aren't they allowed to call family and friends?

"Two reasons: one, they call to warn the others to get out of their apartments so they won't be found when [the police] come to arrest them. Two, there are security procedures for fear of PAHA [hostile terrorist activity]."

Hostile terrorist activity? Alexander, Michael, Richard, Anna and Marina? What are they going to do - blow up the plane with their cell phone? What terrorist activity are you talking about?

"There are procedures. There are rigid security rules. And we abide by them."

Time to sleep

Wednesday morning, a last brief summing up conversation with the spokeswoman. After we left the night before, the first 20 detainees were mobiled to the authority's headquarters for a hearing, registration and a security check, and then moved to the incarceration facility. There were no problems. The Zafrir Force hit the road again at midnight and by morning rounded up 44 workers - Uzbeks, Romanians, Bulgarians and Turks - including seven women. All of them, it turned out, were in the country illegally and were to be expelled immediately. All of them are now under detention at the Ma'asiyahu "holding facility."

Chief Inspector Zafrir Ovadia was pleased with the night's work. The intelligence info was right on the money. Zafrir worked nonstop around the clock from Tuesday morning until Wednesday morning. It was time to sleep.