Deportation plans of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers from Israel

UPDATE

On Tuesday (24th April) the Israeli government announced to the Supreme Court that its plans to forcibly deport Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers to Rwanda and Uganda cannot be implemented.
All deportation orders are cancelled and permits will be renewed.

Ruvi tweeted about it here.


On Monday 9th April, Dr Ruvi Ziegler co-authored a letter to the Israeli Attorney General (AG) imploring him not to authorise plans for deportations of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers from Israel, signed by over 50 immigration and international refugee law academics the world over.

The letter received some coverage in the press:

https://www.jta.org/…/sixty-refugee-law-experts-object-isra… (English)

https://www.mako.co.il/…/edu…/Article-dc97497d80ca261004.htm (Hebrew)

https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-5225564,00.html (Hebrew)

And on Twitter…

https://twitter.com/ruviz/status/983658248074153986

 

On Tuesday 10th April the High Court of Justice Heard the petition, which was submitted in January, challenging the constitutionality of the deportations.

There was a lot of confusion in the hearing because of all of the recent changes – the declaration of the Israeli Prime Minister that the deportation deal with Rwanda fell through and that Israel has a new deal with UNHCR, followed by the quick backing out of the deal with the UNHCR and the attempts to pursue the deportations to Uganda.

You can read about last week’s fiasco in Ruvi’s piece in The Conversation.

The Court was literally unable to get a clear answer as to whether or not there is an agreement with Uganda or not. Some of the hearing was conducted ex parte.

Eventually, the Court decided the petition, dismissing it because the factual basis for the petition submitted in January was largely irrelevant. The government was given five days to update the Court whether deportation is actually an option and, if they don’t present a signed agreement that had received the authorisation of the Attorney General by April 15th, the Court decided that the people who are now in immigration detention awaiting their deportation will be released.

The Court barred the deportation from occurring in the next two weeks, so that it would be possible to submit new petitions. The letter to the AG will be submitted to the Court with that petition.