In January, she was told that the Interministerial Committee Granting Status in Humanitarian Cases had rejected her appeal for legal status here. On Thursday she was put in jail to await deportation.

Her son, Andre, said the decision was based in part on facts that were wrong, such as the erroneous statement that she wanted to stay to take care of her grandson rather than her son, demonstrating that the committee didn't understand the case's merits. But he wasn't given the opportunity to meet with them and present his side of the story.

"They didn't want to listen," he said. "They didn't want to hear the facts."

The Taranetzes are not alone. No one whose case is being considered has the right to appear before the committee, a situation which has angered rights organizations who work to obtain status for foreigners. The practice is emblematic of a committee they charge with being secretive and lacking due process.

"It's outrageous," said Nicole Maor, the attorney representing the Taranetzes. "It's the ABCs of basic rights. You have the right to be heard before a committee that's deciding your future."

"How can you have a fair hearing if you only hear one side of the story," she asked, charging that applicants' exclusion from the committee meeting leads to "terrible outcomes like the one in this case."

Maor, who works with the Israel Religious Action Center, filed a court petition on Monday to prevent Ella Taranetz from being deported.

Gilad Heimann, spokesman for Interior Minister Ophir Paz-Pines, said that on Wednesday the minister had called for a meeting with the committee "to see how we can make this committee work better." The Interior Ministry is responsible for making decisions conferring status to individuals.

Sabine Hadad, spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry's Population Registry, stressed that the committee "takes every case seriously. They check everything, all the details. They don't miss anything."

She explained that individuals present their cases with any supporting documents to the local branches of the Interior Ministry, which then convey their files to the interministerial committee.

"There's no case that reaches the committee where there hasn't been a personal meeting," Hadad said, referring to what happens at the branch level.

She said personal appearances wouldn't be appropriate before the committee itself, since the professionals who deal with individual applicants are at the branches and time is short for the committee, which considers up to 20 cases at each of its monthly meetings.

But when those meetings take place, where they happen and who represents the various ministries at the committee meeting is cloaked in secrecy, organizations such as the Association for Civil Rights in Israel complain, making it hard to review decisions.

"They act as if they were dealing with the nuclear secrets of the country. They meet in secret. You don't know when. You don't know where. You don't know exactly who these people are. It's unbelievable," said Yoav Loeff, spokesman for ACRI, which wrote a report roundly criticizing the Population Registry and the interministerial committee in December. "Any authorities in a democratic regime should work in a transparent way and with criteria and rules that should be known to people. And here it's totally the opposite."

Hadad said that no specific guidelines exist for how the committee makes its decision because the point is to have each office present its own viewpoint on the matter. In the case of Andre Taranetz, she said, the National Insurance Institute pointed out that he receives sources of help aside from his mother's care and it considers him to be independent. For instance, he travels overseas to compete on behalf of Israel in paraplegic tennis matches.

Hadad said she couldn't list the names of the people sitting on the committee because they are always subject to change. There are representatives from the Population Registry, the NII, the police, the government liaison office, and the Health, Social Affairs, and Foreign ministries.

She also couldn't provide any numbers about how many cases have been approved by the committee, though Loeff said "it's very rare that a positive answer comes from this committee."