Foreign workers are sometimes arrested unnecessarily and treated improperly, Interior Minister Avraham Poraz acknowledged in a closed meeting with senior ministry officials.

He blamed such occurrences on a lack of sufficient manpower and called for all police units to be accompanied by ministry workers when they round up foreign workers.

"It is impossible that, while there are 480 officers in the Immigration Police, there are only 62 workers in the parallel Interior Ministry unit," he said at the meeting, which took place on Sunday and whose protocol was released Tuesday. "We need to immediately man all the positions that are available."

Ninety-four positions were mandated at the unit's creation in September 2002. Poraz indicated he will be approaching the Treasury to secure funding for the remaining posts.

Though police units are supposed to be accompanied by Interior Ministry personnel to verify that foreign workers are illegal, officials in the meeting complained that the lack of adequate manpower makes this impossible. Therefore, unaccompanied units arrest foreign workers who are held for a lengthy periods before being checked and released because it turns out they are legal.

The Immigration Police, however, denied that units ever go on raids without ministry personnel.

"About wrongful arrests, Poraz should complain to his people because they decide if someone is legal or not," said Immigration Police spokeswoman Supt. Orit Friedman.

A ministry aide confirmed that Poraz's statements came in response to public criticism of the Immigration Police and the arrest process by Ch.-Supt. Dekel Mushkato, deputy head of the Immigration Police in the North.

One month ago, Army Radio broadcast comments Mushkato made to an Interior Ministry worker admitting that the police use excessive force when detaining foreign workers and arrest legal workers to meet their deportation quotas.

At the time his statements aired, Mushkato had been placed on paid leave and was being investigated on charges of bribery for his role in a scheme that enabled certain illegal workers to stay here.

The ministry denied Mushkato's assertion that some legal workers have been deported, and officials at the meeting reviewed the procedures by which workers provide their version of events and at times appear before judges to demonstrate that the process works properly.

Sigal Rozen of the Hot Line for Migrant Workers was unimpressed by the Poraz's call for more workers to accompany officers on raids. She said that it's often Interior Ministry workers who approve wrongful arrests, as police only have the power to hold someone for 24 hours after which the ministry has to approve a longer detention. In many of those cases, she said, those held by the ministry and even deported are legal.

"If they do not change their attitude, what difference does it make?" she said.