Foreign workers in Maasiyahu Prison, photographed in May. It is difficult to convince people to cooperate with the police, says Sigal Rosen, who heads a help hotline. (Photo by Nir Kafri)

Sigal Rosen, director of the hotline, spoke with the police in Shou's name and received assurances that she could safely disclose his address and phone number; he would not be arrested or harmed in any way. Not that she needed any special assurance. According to a decision by the State Prosecutor's Office, the police will not examine the legal status of a foreign worker when he files a complaint, and if his testimony is required for an investigation or the preparation of an indictment, he will not be deported until the end of proceedings.

Rosen says that she felt she need the assurance "just to be on the safe side, because the complaint was not filed at the police station in the normal fashion." In retrospect it turned out that the promise she was given was worth no more than the forged visa that was sold to Shou.

Just one week later the Immigration Police burst into Shou's apartment and arrested him and two other Chinese who shared the rent with him and took them to the Renaissance Hotel detention center in Nazareth.

No one is accusing the police of making the arrests based on the information provided by Rosen; it is likely that Shou's address was provided by some other source, perhaps even the Chinese workers' employer, the very man who sold the forged visa.

Rosen, who had no knowledge of the arrest, continued to try setting up a meeting with the Chinese witness and a police officer, as she had been requested to do by the police. When she did not find Shou at his workplace she began to search the detention centers and eventually found him at the lockup in Nazareth. She went back to the police, but by the time they located his file, it was too late: He had already been deported - within just one week of his arrest.

'Regrettable mistake'

It is unclear if any hearing procedures were conducted Shou's case and to which he was legally entitled, and if a hearing was held, it is unclear how the fact that he had reported a crime and was a potential witness escaped the eyes of the police who made the arrest, the prison authorities and the detention court.

Today it is difficult to check the progression of matters, but Rosen does not rule out the possibility that the hasty deportation was facilitated after someone bought Shou a plane ticket. It is also likely that the person who purchased the ticket and brought it to the Immigration Police was the employer who sold him the forged visa.

Superintendent Orit Friedman, assistant spokesman for the Immigration Authority, said in response that according to the State Prosecutor's decision, if a complaint filed by a foreign worker leads to an investigation or an indictment for which his presence is required, he will not be deported. Friedman added, however, that "if it is clear that the file will be closed due to lack of evidence or public interest, there is not justification for keeping [the foreign worker] in Israel."

Police Commander Ziva Agami Cohen, who heads the crime-fighting unit of the Immigration Authority, said that the deportation of Shou without hearing his testimony was a "regrettable mistake," apparently caused by the late examination of the information.

"If the information had been provided directly by the worker," said Agami Cohen, "if he had told the police officer at the time of his arrest, this would not have happened."

Rosen also feels that in this case there was a mistake, that in their enthusiasm to get anyone possible onto a plane, the Immigration Police were simply negligent in examining the case. Maybe. It is possible that similar negligence also led to a deportation order against Nimo Benjamin, a foreign worker from Ghana, who is now packing his bags to leave. He was arrested a few days after he complained about a Nigerian woman, also residing in Israel illegally, who was operating a smuggling network for bringing workers to Israel via Egypt and the Sinai Desert.

Benjamin told Haaretz that he complained after he was exposed to the extortion methods the women uses against on foreign workers. "I tried to mediate between her and a young Ghanaian woman, in order to settle a debt," he said last week. "The Ghanaian worker had promised to pay the smuggler $3,000 for bringing her here, and I wanted to reach a payment arrangement for her. When I went to speak to the smuggler, she told me that since the woman had not paid her on time, the debt was now double and she threatened that if she did not receive the money, she would make sure that the woman would be deported."

Benjamin took the information to Sigal Rosen, who went to the police. Rosen says that the police actually expressed an interest and pressured her into finding other witnesses who would back up Benjamin's story. Rosen asked Benjamin to use his connections and to convince other victims of the smuggler to overcome their fear of the police and come forward with testimony.

Benjamin tried. At one point he went back to Rosen and told her he had been threatened, that he had been told that the smuggler knew that he was gathering information and that he was due to be arrested.

Rosen calmed him down and explained that the police were interested in his assistance and were not cooperating with the smuggler. This did calm him down, but he did have the chance to be of much help to the police. A few days after that conversation with Rosen, he was arrested and served with a deportation order.

"I served as a personal example in order to convince others to testify," he said last week."I am not angry at my deportation; it was expected. But now, after others saw what happened to me, no one from the Ghanaian community will testify. That woman can ask any price and those whom she is blackmailing will pay up and keep quiet. The most frightening thing for our people is deportation."

The Immigration Authority responded that in Benjamin's case he had not filed any complaint, was not connected with any investigation and that there was no connection between the investigation and his arrest and deportation.

A good deal for employers

The 11 Chinese who filed a huge suit at the Labor Court against their employers, the Salon construction company, for the withholding of their wages, learned that it is much easier to get to the detention center and onto a plane to China that it is to get to the courthouse. The suit was filed in March, but the preliminary testimony hearing, the stage after which they can be immediately deported, was set only for the beginning of August. The filing of the defendant's response will apparently take even longer. Since March, however, all 11 have been arrested, apart from one who has already left Israel, and they are being held in different locations.

As if this were not enough, three attempts have been made to deport four of the foreign workers, although the police knew about their wages suit and the date of the preliminary hearing.

In one case, Noa Teori, the lawyer representing the 11, had to file an administrative petition in the District Court, requesting a restraining order against their deportation.

"I would like to emphasize that this petition is most urgent," wrote Teori in the petition, "as at the time of this petition's filing, petitioner No.4 [one of the plaintiffs, Chin Honguoy - N.W.] was at the airport, and if the requested restraining order is not granted, he will be deported over the next few hours."

The petition also claimed that since the filing of the suit, all the plaintiffs had been arrested and this shows collaboration between the construction company (the defendant), the Interior Ministry and the Immigration Authority "at the expense of the petitioners, all in an effort to deprive them of their rights as petitioners and to prevent them from gaining access to the court system, which is a basic right."

Teori says that according to the Chinese, while they were in the detention center, a man came to them on behalf of the company they were suing and offered them sums of cash in exchange for their agreement to board a plane immediately. The sums offered ranged from NIS 7,000 to NIS 13,000, and delivery was promised as the boarded the plane. So far they have refused, mainly because the sums in the suit are much greater. They have been sitting in jail for several months already, and if they reach the conclusion that the law cannot be trusted, they are liable to accept the offer. In a suit that totals over NIS 600,000, it is a good deal for the accused employer.

Rosen says that even if the arrests were not made intentionally, the increasing numbers and frequency of such cases creates the impression that the police are protecting the visa forger, the smuggler and the exploiting employer instead of the victims. After all, from the moment the complainant leaves, there is no longer any possibility of verifying the complaint and punishing the guilty parties.

Rosen notes that even if the complaints ended without charges being pressed, the very fact that the complainants were arrested, not released and then deported before the complaints were investigated deters other migrant workers from filing complaints at all. "It is already difficult to convince people to cooperate with the police," says Rosen, "so it would be fitting to deal kindly with those who have plucked up the courage to complain."

Agami Cohen says that the general rule is that if a foreign worker has a suit pending in the Labor Court, he is not deported until after the preliminary testimony hearing, but that the foreign worker or his lawyer is responsible for obtaining a restraining order against a deportation and notifying the Immigration Authority that such an order has been issued.