Ever since her husband was deported in March, E., a foreign worker from Colombia, has had to work 10 to 12 hours a day. The expenses for day care for her daughter Keren, who is less than 18 months old, and for a baby-sitter after the day-care center closes, eat up a great deal of her income. She sends the rest to her family in Colombia, mainly for paying off debts.

"The travel agent who arranged the visa to Israel for us charged each of us $5,000," explained E. "We went into huge debt in order to pay for this. Since my husband was deported, I'm the only one who is able to repay the debt. I am working only for this. Colombia is not Israel. If we don't pay back the money, I don't know what will happen."

Last Friday, two days after she explained this, relatives from Colombia phoned E. and informed her that her husband had been murdered. Is the debt the reason for the murder? She doesn't know. She and her husband were born and grew up in the region in Colombia that is controlled by the drug cartel. There, she says, people have been killed just because they refused to work in the drug industry. E.'s relatives begged her not to come home, at least until the circumstances of the murder become clear.

E. still finds it difficult to contemplate her future. Again and again she returns to the last time she saw her husband. "It was on the morning of the day he was arrested. We said good-bye to each other and each of us went about our business. They arrested him at the bus stop. I was not able to see him before he left. When I came to the prison in Nazareth to bring him his suitcase, they told me that there were too many people and they didn't let me see him. On the phone he said: `Never mind, I'll meet you in Colombia.' "

The news of the murder caught E. in the midst of a feverish search for a place to live. Her roommate Luce, a foreign worker from Peru, had been arrested the previous day. E. knows she will not be able to afford the rent alone and was afraid that she would be left without a roof over her head. The fact that the two women - Luce, a single woman, and E., a mother on her own - were sharing an apartment is not unusual. Recently, as a result of the massive deportation of male foreign workers, commune-like arrangements have sprung up among the women, which are based mainly on solidarity and good will. The women are matched up mainly by the churches. Thus it happens that in some of the apartments the residents do not have even a common language. In one such apartment, where one African woman and two South American women live, communication is in English and Hebrew. For all of these women, both are foreign languages.

Regarding her willingness to share an apartment with a mother and child, L., a single woman from Ecuador, says: "We are all women and we can understand what it means for a mother to be left on her own, especially since we don't have family here." She and her friend have taken into their apartment a woman and a 2-year-old child, who were left on their own after the father was deported. At first they gave financial support to the child and the mother, who in the sudden move from one apartment to another had used up all her meager savings; they also established a small kitty to buy basic equipment for them. According to the mother, the willingness of these women, who had known her only superficially, to extend a helping hand gave her a sense of security "of the sort that, in ordinary life, a family gives."

`Loving aunties'

The husband of M., a foreign worker from Ghana, was arrested when she was in the last stages of pregnancy and deported when their daughter was less than a month old. She had to leave her rented apartment and spent the first weeks after the birth in the bomb shelter of one of the churches. When she left the shelter she was taken in by two female members of her church, who crowded together in their small apartment in South Tel Aviv and gave her a room for herself and her daughter.

"They invite me to eat with them, even if I don't participate in the shopping, and they pay the rent and all the bills," related M. "They also help me take care of the baby, because she reminds them of the children they left at home."

G., a foreign worker from Ecuador who is raising her 5-year-old daughter alone, has already lived in two such communes. In the first, she says, "We were like sisters. We cooked and we ate together. They enjoyed playing with my daughter and I sometimes got an hour's rest. It was good for my little girl. Though she grew up without a father, she was surrounded by loving aunties."

E. and her daughter Keren enjoyed a similar arrangement with Luce, up until last week. Luce previously prefered to live with roommates who didn't have children, because "living in a house with a baby means waking up from crying in the middle of the night and this is hard for someone like me who works for many hours a day." But, she added, "I've known Keren since she was born and I simply love her." In recent months, Luce looked after Keren when E. was working late. She played with her, fed her, bathed her and put her to bed. She was also as generous as she could be with money.

But like everything in the lives of the foreign workers, even these arrangements are fragile and transitory. The loving aunties, G.'s roommates, were arrested and deported, one after the other. G. did manage to find another women's commune for herself and her daughter, but there the relationships are not as close.

"I don't blame my roommates," she says. "At any moment they could be caught and each of them is looking out for herself. I can't even ask them to bring my daughter home from the kindergarten for me, because if they get caught on the way home, I'll feel guilty.' "

According to Luce, as the pressure increases, "It happens that there is a tacit envy between the single women and the mothers. The single women can work and earn more money, but the mothers feel more protected, because the authorities won't deport them because of the children, but they will deport us."

Perhaps this envy and sense of insecurity are what led G.'s and M.'s roommates to forbid them to have guests at the apartment. "They said to me, `Do whatever you want, but just don't give out our address,' " said G.

"They told me that if I brought an Israeli woman here, they would kick me out of the apartment," apologized M. in a conversation that was conducted in the street. "They said: `If the police come, they will take us and you will stay.' In the evenings, when the police begin to scout the neighborhood, we try to keep quiet, we close all the windows and we don't turn on the lights. If the baby cries, they say to her, `Please be quiet. If the police come, they will arrest us all.' "

At a special mass for E.'s husband that was held last Saturday at Saint Peter's Catholic Church in Jaffa, most of the congregants were women. Many of them, like E., are mothers of children who have remained in Israel on their own after their husbands were arrested and deported. It turns out that after two campaigns of "voluntary departure" that were initiated by the Immigration Authority last year and at the beginning of this year, the old system of deporting a man has been renewed with a vengeance, in the hope that the wife will be persuaded to follow in his footsteps.

Looking for Daddy

Those who can, leave. The life of a single mother who is a foreign worker in Israel is insupportable. Only those who are unable to leave without bringing disaster upon themselves or upon their families stay. "No woman wants to stay here alone after her husband has left," says G., from Ecuador. "The long separation endangers the relationship and we have heard about many families that have been broken after the husband found another woman."

But those most hurt by this phenomenon are the children. The little ones don't understand; it is very difficult to explain to them why their father has disappeared so suddenly. E.'s daughter Keren kept looking for her father at home for months and would burst into tears when she couldn't find him. The photograph of the father, which E. shows to the little girl, is wrinkled and tattered. Older children who have witnessed the arrest of their fathers often develop symptoms of post-traumatic syndrome, like nightmares and eating disorders. As if this were not enough, their lives become difficult and lonely.

G.'s daughter has been able to attend a day camp this summer and she is happy. The fee for the camp, which was organized by Mesila (the Hebrew acronym for Center for Assistance and Information for the Foreign Community), is very low, thanks to donations that the center received for this purpose. According to the director of Mesila, Edna Alter-Dambo, the fathers of most of the children in the day camp have been deported. When the day camp is over, the little girl will again spend entire days alone in the apartment in front of the television.

It is difficult to determine the exact number of families that have been left fatherless. At the Immigration Authority they do not collect this data or conduct any follow-up to find out whether deportation of fathers of children is a policy that is worth its price. Alter-Dambo says that in recent months the main clients at Mesila have been mothers who have been left on their own and suffer terrible hardship. According to her, "sometimes they come to the office with a baby on one arm and a suitcase on the other and say: This is everything I have.'"

At the Hotline for Migrant Workers they say that in recent months, dozens of women have been added to the circle of mothers left on their own. According to the hotline director, Sigal Rosen, the Interior Ministry's policy vis-a-vis couples near the end of a pregnancy has become tougher recently. "If it used to be that they would release the husband from arrest and postpone the deportation until after the birth, today they hardly do this or they condition the release on large sums of money, which are often not within the [potential deportees'] reach.

Last week, along with reports of a decision by the ministerial committee for population registration in favor of granting legal status to some children of foreign workers, rumors spread in South Tel Aviv that the Immigration Authority is going to renew its policy of arresting and deporting families with their children. The rumor was apparently based on a statement made by Welfare Minister Zevulun Orlev, who last week told Haaretz correspondent Relly Sa'ar ["Panel to legalize foreign workers' children," July 7] that after the decision is approved in the committee, children who are not given legal status will be deported from the country together with their parents.

However, the rumor is not unfounded. The Immigration Authority does have a detailed plan for arresting entire families, who will be kept in a detention facility for women. "It is very easy to keep families there and there is no problem with getting the necessary equipment, like disposable diapers," said the authority's spokeswoman, Superintendent Orit Friedman, a year ago.

Dr. Yitzhak Kadman, executive director of the National Council for the Child, says that arresting children is illegal. According to him, such a step contravenes an international treaty, to which Israel is a signatory, that ensures equal rights for all the children within its territory. "I'm not saying that it is altogether forbidden to deport families with children," adds Kadman, "but the state will not fall apart if we allow ourselves to take a humane attitude."

This week Superintendent Friedman dismissed the rumor. According to her, last week the authority decided not to arrest parents with children at all, at least until the official decision of the ministerial committee is published. Though there is a contingency plan for deporting families, in the meantime there is no intention of using it.

The media advisor to Interior Minister Avraham Poraz, Tibi Rabinowitz, says that there has been no hardening of the ministry's policy and there is no directive prohibiting release from arrest of men whose wives are about to give birth. The advisor preferred not to comment on the matter of the plan to deport families.