Interior Minister Avraham Poraz made this announcement yesterday after meeting the officials in charge of dealing with foreign workers.

Poraz instructed the Immigration Police to take a ministry representative with them when they go to arrest foreign workers, so that he or she can check their documents and status.

Last week Haaretz reported that the Immigration Police arrests legal foreign workers, keeps them in custody under false pretenses and deports them to fill the deportation quota set by the government. The immigration police also hides documents and passports of foreign workers so that it can deport them.

The Immigration Police deceives the Interior Ministry, and as a result has deported thousands of legal foreign workers, a former deputy commander in the Immigration Police was quoted saying.

The ministry's enforcement officials complained to Poraz that staff shortage prevents efficient supervision over the Immigration Police.

"This creates a situation in which foreign workers are arrested and brought to the police station with no Interior Ministry examination of their papers, and sometimes they are held in custody for examination for unnecessary periods of time until they are released," a statement to the press said.

Poraz said he would ask the treasury and the Civil Service Commission to fill all 94 positions allocated the ministry's enforcement unit. At present it comprises only 62 workers.

"It is unthinkable that alongside 480 immigration policemen there are only 62 ministry workers," he said. "This results in unnecessary arrests and mistreatment of foreign workers."

An additional 32 inspectors would ensure that every police team has an inspector "to prevent legal workers from being deported," he said.

According to ministry data, since the establishment of the Immigration Police, 41,032 foreign workers have been deported - about half the number of workers examined by the inspectors during the arrests. More than 60,000 foreign workers left for fear of being deported, or because they could not find work. Some 3,700 of the arrested workers were transferred to new employers instead of being expelled. These were workers who arrived legally during the last two years, but left the employer who brought them and thus lost their legal standing.