Sigal Rozen, a founder of the organization, raised the issue at a Knesset committee meeting on Tuesday.

"There were cases in which people didn't get to us and were deported," Herzl Shviro, director of the Justice Ministry's Department for Investigations of Police Officers, said in response.

He added that in many cases, the workers didn't want to sit months in prison while their charges were investigated and chose to leave of their own accord.

Shviro said the situation has improved. "In principle now, a person won't be deported until his complaint is checked," he said.

Two months ago Shviro's department began distributing letters to foreign workers who make complaints of abuse, which they can show to police to prevent their deportation. The letters also allow them to be released from jail during the length of the investigation and prosecution.

Rozen said workers have been deported early even since then. She cited a letter from the investigations division dated November 22, explaining that a file of charged police brutality had been closed because "the event is not fit for presenting criminal charges, especially in light of the fact that the complainant was deported from Israel. Therefore I decided not to continue the investigation."

Altogether, according to Rozen, 18 of the 36 cases her organization worked on in the past year were closed for similar reasons.

She praised Shviro's unit for processing complaints faster.

"It's true that [the investigations department] is working quicker," she said. "But the police are also getting better. They are also deporting more quickly."

Another advocate for foreign workers at the Knesset meeting, however, criticized the police for not working efficiently enough. Aliza Suissa said the police arrest caregivers and take hours to release them even though they are legal. In the meantime, elderly and disabled people are left alone in dangerous situations.

"They lie in bed for eight hours, even in urine, because their caretaker was arrested on the way to the grocery store," said Suissa, who represents the disabled community and their caretakers.

In response, Immigration Police officers present said they were implementing a policy to take arrested caretakers to the home of their employers to review their situation before bringing them to police headquarters.

"Assuming we catch a worker without documents in the streets, we make enquiries on the spot," Linda Garby, the officer who handles complaints against the police, told the committee. "He will be taken to his employer and we will check it, and if we find he's telling the truth, he will not be arrested. That's an indisputable policy."