Center for the Defence of the Individual - Despite his deportation from Israel, a man will return to his home until a decision is rendered on his family unification application: the court rules the deportation was unauthorized and in breach of the law
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חזרה לעמוד הקודם
11.08.2011

Despite his deportation from Israel, a man will return to his home until a decision is rendered on his family unification application: the court rules the deportation was unauthorized and in breach of the law

In 2005, an Israeli resident married a Jordanian Palestinian. The couple has three children and lives in East Jerusalem. In 2006, the woman applied for family unification with her husband. Two years later, on March 16, 2008 – 10 days after her brother perpetrated the attack on the "Mercaz HaRav" Yeshiva – the Ministry of Interior decided to reject her application due to her being related to the assailant. HaMoked appealed against the refusal, arguing it stemmed from extraneous considerations and constitutes collective punishment. Following the ministry's continued silence, HaMoked petitioned the Court for administrative Affairs.

Following the state's new assertion about security claims against the applicants and their kin, the parties agreed that the petition would be deleted and the application reconsidered.
 
The application was refused a second time. HaMoked objected to this security-based refusal, and requested further details about the "security information" against the couple. The Ministry of Interior offered no substantial response to the objection. Following the Ja'abis judgment – whereby the ministry must summon the family unification applicants to a hearing, when considering a refusal of their application based on security or criminal grounds – HaMoked filed a request for a hearing on behalf of the couple. Once more, despite HaMoked's repeated appeals and reminders, there was no reply.

On March 24, 2011, police officers arrived at the husband's workplace in Jerusalem, and arrested him for deportation as an illegal alien. The man tried explaining that he was legally present in Israel, his family unification application pending at the Ministry of Interior. He also clarified that he was not a West Bank resident, that he had never lived there, and had no place to stay there. Ignoring his claims, the officers deported him to the West Bank. HaMoked urgently appealed to the Ministry of Interior to let the man return to his home in Israel.  HaMoked asserted the deportation went against the ministerial procedure, which stipulates that "pending a decision on an application, objection or appeal, no enforcement action shall be taken against the applicants". The Ministry of Interior responded that there were no grounds for intervention in the deportation action.  

On April 11, 2011, HaMoked filed an urgent petition to the court to instruct the Ministry of Interior to let the man return to Israel until a decision is reached on his family unification application. HaMoked pleaded that the interior ministry had overstepped its authority and flouted its own regulation, while disregarding the fact that both objection and hearing request had not been answered. HaMoked added that the deportation also contravened the Regulations of the Entry into Israel Law, 5712-1952 – the police officer who had interrogated the man and had ordered his deportation was not "a police officer with the rank of chief inspector or higher"; a written order had not been issued; no report had been made documenting the petitioner's assertions and the grounds for deportation – conditions set to ensure the basic rights of suspected illegal aliens.

In its response, the state contended
that no proceeding initiated on his behalf justified his continued presence without permit in Israel and that "the technical failure during his deportation process is insufficient to justify the invalidation of the deportation". Later on, the state clarified it had no security objections against the nullification of the deportation and the granting of Israeli status to the petitioner.

On June 6, 2011, the Jerusalem District Court accepted the petition. The judge nullified the deportation decision and manner of execution, and ruled that "under said procedure it was impossible to deport the petitioner prior to making a decision on either the objection or the hearing request" and that "the process conducted in the petitioner's case was substantially defective in fundamental aspects […] the decision of the staff sergeant major of the police was issued without authority, contrary to the legal provisions and is therefore – void". The state will pay petitioner's expenses and attorney's fees in the sum of NIS 5,000.