The civil service commissioner prevented the two workers' firings, but that was not the end of their troubles. The investigation into the irregularities at the deportation unit and the serious harassment they have suffered has dragged on for over seven months.

"Generally speaking, the hearings for the foreign workers are not conducted properly. The detainees are frequently cursed, threatened and ridiculed. In short, they are humiliated," wrote Garty on May 18, 2003, in a letter to Amir Gal, director of the unit at the Interior Ministry. "Is the act of deportation not harsh enough humiliation and punishment? I view my job as an important service to the public. I have no ethical problem with sending away foreigners who are working or residing in Israel illegally. I do have a big problem with the fact that state employees (including the police) are exploiting their authority."

Garty's job is to accompany police officers in their search for foreign workers employed without permits, to conduct hearings for those who are apprehended, and to sign orders for their detention. Garty said in his letter that he was present when another enforcement coordinator asked an Immigration Police officer at Haifa port to extract a confession from a Moldavian detainee that he had slipped into Israel via the Egyptian border. The policeman took the detainee into a corner and beat him on the back of his neck with a plastic pipe, resulting in the man's confession.

In light of the success of the beating method, the coordinator asked the policeman's assistance in "handling" another detainee, who, like the Moldavian, had denied being smuggled into the country and who claimed he entered Israel legally.

`Unit informers'

In another incident the Garty reported in writing, policemen and enforcement coordinators received bouquets of flowers, free of charge, from the owner of a flower packing plant in the Beit She'an area who employed foreign workers.

Garty, who had been hired by the enforcement unit three months earlier after a strict screening process, wrote that he was certain Gal, who had set up the unit and invested much effort in it, would not want it to be rife with improper practices.

Gal immediately met with Garty, agreed with him that the acts he described were serious and conducted a serious of inquiries. In violation of Garty's explicit request, however, Gal revealed his identity as the one who complained, thereby exposing Garty to hostility from his co-workers and supervisors.

Moti Berkowitz, the person directly above Garty, was even heard telling another clerk in the unit that he would fax him a copy of Garty's letter just to show him "what kind of tattling people are in the unit."

About 10 days later, Gal summoned Garty to his office and notified him that he was fired. During their conversation, which was recorded and passed on to the CSC's investigators, Garty told Gal that "serious acts had been committed."

"Then maybe you are not suited to this work," responded Gal. When Garty mentioned the policemen who beat the detainees, Gal replied, "I'm not interested; go to the department for investigating police officers (Hebrew acronym Mahash)."

Gal accused Garty of absenteeism, but Garty explained that he had brought doctors' authorizations that he had been ill. Gal eventually canceled Garty's dismissal and even told Garty he was proud of what he had done.

Fearing the investigation of his claims would now be whitewashed or buried, Garty went to the comptroller at the Interior Ministry, the interior minister, the Civil Service Commission (CSC) and the state comptroller and told them what was happening.

On June 24, 2003 Garty met with the Interior Ministry's comptroller. Two days later, Herzl Gedz, director of the ministry's Population Registry, who is in charge of the enforcement unit, came to the unit's offices in Haifa. Gedz assembled all the workers and told them that "anyone who leaked anything would be kicked out," as Garty later reported to the state comptroller and the commission. At the end of the meeting with the workers, Gedz told Garty that he was fired.

In a letter to Meretz Knesset member Yossi Sarid, who intervened in Garty's favor, Civil Service Commissioner Shmuel Hollander explained that on July 4, 2003 an investigation had been opened at both the CSC and at Mahash.

It was "for the investigation of criminal and disciplinary suspicions in connection with the behavior of the unit's workers, policemen and Prison Services personnel toward foreign workers."

Hollander also ordered the cancellation of the dismissals of the two whistle blowers. The complaints by the second worker, as detailed in a letter sent to Sarid at that end of the CSC's investigation, were similar to Garty's, with the addition of the destruction of the personal belongings of foreign workers during body and house searches.

The second complainant even claimed that Gal had pressured attorney Elad Ezer, a judge at the internal court that conducts hearings for detainees, not to release them on bail in case they might disappear, making it impossible to deport them.

The CSC received a recording of Ezer talking about the pressures. Garty and his co-worker also complained that other workers at the unit were using the unit's vehicles for personal travel, including to work at the polling stations on election day, even though these workers received a wage supplement for car expenses. Since then Garty has given the CSC information indicating that enforcement unit coordinators often feel compelled to approve the deportation of foreign workers - to keep up with the government's deportation quotas - even when the workers have permits and it is clear they are being falsely accused.

In the meantime Gal also ordered Berkowitz to look into Garty's complaints. Berkowitz reported that some of the witnesses he interviewed supported Garty's claims that policemen had beaten a Moldavian worker and another foreign worker, but others denied this.

Chief Superintendent Jamal Hakhrush, the Immigration Police officer in charge of the Haifa region, questioned his officers and all of them denied that any beating of detainees had occurred. Berkowitz therefore concluded that it was impossible to tell exactly what had happened.

Berkowitz concluded his report by noting that in any event, "it should be made clear to the enforcement coordinators that the use of force of any kind is strictly forbidden."

Berkowitz also found that the owner of the flower packaging plant had insisted that the unit's workers take flowers from her, and therefore noted in his report that all the workers be told they are not allowed to accept gifts. He also claimed that the workers regretted having accepted the flowers.

Total whitewash

In his letter to the state comptroller, Garty wrote that Berkowitz's inquiry was "a total whitewash," adding, "the system is corrupt and there is a conspiracy of silence."

Garty asked the state comptroller's office to grant him the status of someone who exposed corruption, which would make him eligible for protection against harassment and even financial assistance, but his request was denied on the grounds that his exposure to harassment had not been proved.

Garty appealed the decision, but the Interior Ministry viewed the rejection of the harassment claim as proof that no corruption had been exposed in the enforcement unit.

"The harassment of Asaf," says attorney Barak Calev of the Movement for Quality Government, "is typical of the harassment of anyone who exposes a system's faults. Right after he took steps to try and solve the problem, the system kicked him and even tried to concoct criminal charges against him. We hope that the CSC will protect workers who warn of corruption."

Soon after the beginning of the whole affair Garty was relieved of most of his authority. When the state comptroller asked the Interior Ministry about this, he was told that since Garty had not passed his certification exam, he could not perform some of his duties.

Prior to this, Garty and some of is co-workers had been allowed to perform various duties, despite the fact that they had not been officially authorized. The certification course ended in mid-June 2003, but Garty was ill when the test was administered and he was not notified of a new date when he could sit the test.

Finally, following pressure from the comptroller's office and the Cable and Satellite Council, Garty sat the test at the beginning of September, but only four months later did he receive his grade - 47.

"I view this low grade as another attempt to harass me, to affect my status, to break my spirit and harm my livelihood," wrote Garty to Hollander a few weeks ago. "How is it possible that 60 of the units workers passed the exam and only I, who am about to complete my B.A. at Haifa University, am among the few who did not pass?" Garty asked Hollander to investigate his suspicion that Gedz pressured someone he knows so that she would fail Garty on the exam.

Some time in July 2003 Garty's supervisors filed a complaint to the police that he had gained unauthorized access to a police computer and taken information. Following the complaint policemen came to search Garty's home. Just last week he was informed that the file against him had been closed.

In December 2003 Garty was accused by a Haifa port security officer of forging entry passes and was not allowed to enter the port. Garty was summoned for interrogation.

When Garty arrived for work on December 11, the guards would not allow him to enter the port and confiscated his Interior Ministry employee identity card. The police claim that Garty attacked the guards, but he says he tried to retrieve his card from the table where it lay, was attacked by three guards and required medical treatment at a hospital emergency room. Since then Garty cannot enter the port, and is therefore unable to work.

In mid-January Garty again wrote to Hollander, updating him as to what had happened and noting that he is being denied access to his work place. Yossi Sarid sent a copy of the letter to Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, and asked him to "put an end to this shameful affair."

Sarid says he has not yet received a response, although the Interior Ministry claims one was sent. Interior Ministry Deputy Director-General Yisrael Einav says that he is waiting for the outcome of the investigation by the CSC and only then will he decide on Garty's continued employment in the enforcement unit.