ISRAEL: Israel opens holding centre for illegal immigrants, including Darfur refugees

Record ID: 273163

  • Title: ISRAEL: Israel opens holding centre for illegal immigrants, including Darfur refugees
  • Date: 19th July 2007
  • Summary: DICHTER WALKING INTO TEMPORARY HOUSING STRUCTURE DICHTER TALKING TO TWO WOMEN FROM ERITREA WHO WERE STAYING AT THE CENTRE
  • Embargoed: 3rd August 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Israel
  • Country: Israel
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVAE4U6TE8G74DH58XS6YMOJ3X7S
  • Story Text: Israeli authorities opened a temporary housing site at a location adjacent to a prison to house hundreds of mostly African illegal immigrants on Tuesday (July 17).
    The facility, located in the Negev Desert community of Ketziot, will provide a temporary stay for the illegal immigrants who come from countries with whom Israel does not have an extradition agreement, officials said.
    Israel has approximately 3,000 so-called "infiltrators", of which 300 are designated as refugees from Darfur. Most of the others are economic migrants, who travelled to Israel in the hopes of finding work and a better lifestyle. Many are north Africans who travelled through Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula before entering Israel.
    Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter led reporters on a tour of the facility that has been dubbed by Israeli authorities as a "holding centre."
    The facility featured rows of air-conditioned trailers surrounded by tents, fences, and guards. Some of the trailers were adorned with artwork.
    The encampment is separate from the adjacent prison, and residents of the facility are not subject to the same limitations as Ketziot prison inmates.
    On Tuesday only 160 people were housed in the facility. Dichter said that eventually 1,000 illegal immigrants would be housed at the location.
    "We have them all around the country. We are trying to bring them all here into one compound that is going to be held by the Ministry of Interior of Public Security in order to enable all ministries of Israel, and all volunteers from Israel and overseas to come to assist them as long as they are here," Dichter said.
    The Israeli Minister of Internal Security said the influx of African migrants and refugees was a growing trend in his country. The issue of Darfur has received much attention in Israel, where the government has been slow to grant "refugee" status to those coming from the war torn Sudanese region, but now is considering asylum for those who fled Darfur.
    "We are not used to it in Israel to be honest with you. We are used to seeing the illegal workers from the West Bank in thousands, but over the last two or three years we started to see this phenomena coming from Egypt. As I said, 300 hundred in a year; then 300 in a month; and during the last weeks, 200 every single week. That's why we decided to block this flow of people who are entering illegally from Sinai desert into Israel. In order to block this flow, we are building this compound to host them here, before sending them back to Egypt, or to their countries, or to accept those refugees that the Israeli government is going to decide about them. I mean those refugees that came from Darfur," Dichter said.
    Israeli authorities have said Egypt agreed last month to accept most of the illegal immigrants who came into Israel from its border with Egypt, but details of this deal have not yet been worked out.
    Dichter also said erecting a fence at the Israeli-Egyptian border would not prevent infiltration, but would bring about a fall in arms smuggling.
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