| Administrative Affairs Court in Tel Aviv-Yafo | ||
| Administrative Appeal 41621-09-19 A.A. and her children M. and S. v. Population and Immigration Authority, Ministry of the Interior | ||
| Before: | The Honorable Judge Michal Agmon-Gonen
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Appellants: |
1. A.A. (Mother of appellants 2 and 3) 2. N.M.K. (Minor) 3.S.S.K. (minor) By Adv. Maya Katz Hilberg and Nadav Feynman of Arnon Tadmor-Levy Law Firm |
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Against
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Respondent: |
Population and Immigration Authority, Ministry of the Interior. By Attorney Yaakov Kleiman and Dankensh Fault from the District Attorney’s Office Civil Case (Civil) |
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| Judgment
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"The tiger drives out all the animals... The lion devours everyone... They died... They went to look for a home for them," is how a 4-year-old girl described her situation, while playing, before a psychologist, after she was arrested with her 9-year-old brother and mother, with the intention of keeping them away from Israel. Two children, aged 9 and 4, who were born, raised and have lived in Israel since their birth, were arrested on 29 August 2019 together with their mother, a Nepalese citizen, a foreign worker who remained in Israel illegally, with the intention of deporting them. Only after three weeks, and in light of urgent proceedings, were they released from custody. The appellants' father, an Indian citizen, resides in Israel and is not a candidate for deportation. The children have the same citizenship of the State of India as their father's. In the appeal before me, it is requested to annul the judgment of the Appeals Tribunal of September 16, 2019 (4021-19, the Honorable Judge Ilan Halabga), which ordered the removal of the appellants from Israel despite the existence of a pending proceeding to regulate their status in Israel for humanitarian reasons (hereinafter: the humanitarian application). The court approved their removal from Israel and ruled that although the children would experience difficulty if they moved to the mother's country of origin, this was not an exceptional circumstance. Even before the Appeals Tribunal's ruling, and throughout the years that have passed since then, the Authority did not examine the best interests of the children and did not establish an orderly procedure for examining the best interests of children in proceedings before it, despite the numerous opportunities given to it by the court, and despite the fact that it undertook to do so in this individual case, both in this proceeding and before the Appeals Tribunal in the parallel proceeding concerning the humanitarian request.