18.08.26, Ran Shimoni, Haaretz
Police and immigration officials have begun detaining asylum seekers identified as regime supporters, even as Israel has no interior minister empowered to sign deportation orders and the attorney general’s office says it was not consulted
Following pressure from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, the police and the Population and Immigration Authority have started to detain, with the intent to deport, Eritrean asylum seekers who have been marked as supporters of the Eritrean regime.
However, the asylum seekers cannot be deported anytime soon, since only the interior minister has the authority to do so. The position of interior minister has been vacant for about eight months, during which time no effort has been made to transfer the authority to deport elsewhere.
The attorney general’s office was unaware of the plan to arrest Eritrean regime supporters in Israel and was not part of the decision-making process to do so, though it has noted in the past that the absence of an interior minister creates legal problems in carrying out such arrests.
The Population Authority and Ben-Gvir’s office refused to respond to Haaretz’s questions.
In June 2025, the Knesset approved a bill permitting the deportation of Eritreans who are known to support their country’s dictatorship. The bill was introduced by MKs Yitzhak Kroizer (Otzma Yehudit) and Yulia Malinovsky (Yisrael Beiteinu), who claimed that these people did not qualify for refugee status and should be repatriated. A further amendment to the law enables the deportation of asylum seekers convicted of crimes punishable by over three years in prison. However, a year after the law and its amendment took effect, only one person has been deported out of 17 cases investigated.
Pointing fingers
Last month, after a youth in Tel Aviv was stabbed by juveniles belonging to the SSQ gang (“the Shapira Squad”), Ben-Gvir sent a letter to the media in which he accused the attorney general’s office of blocking the law’s implementation, claiming that it was acting “contrary to government policies and Knesset laws.” In the letter, he demanded that a meeting be convened in which the office would “present a plan for immediate implementation of the law.
A photo of SSQ members uploaded to their TikTok account, 2024. Credit: Screenshot from the TikTok account @ssq_2025__
The attorney general’s office rejected this claim, saying that the law’s implementation is in the hands of the government, yet for the two and a half years since the 2023 riots in southern Tel Aviv, the special ministerial committee charged with dealing with this issue has not convened. The office added that the minister himself has not addressed the issue for almost two years.
Two weeks ago, the Knesset’s Interior Committee held a meeting on the supervision of the law’s implementation. At the meeting, it came to light that the Interior Ministry, which is operating without an active minister, and the police, which is operating under Ben-Gvir’s authority, are the ones working to implement the law.
“It’s a process, and there are many difficulties at every stage,” said a ministry representative. “This includes finding and documenting the asylum seekers and preparing briefs for the minister.”
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Southern Tel Aviv’s police station commander, Chief Superintendent Anat Ashkenazi, admitted that investigators at the station find it difficult to produce evidence showing that detainees are supporters of the regime.
The day after the Knesset meeting, a meeting was held between Ben-Gvir and officials from the Population Authority and the police, regarding the minister’s letter. A source familiar with the details said that it was decided that the police would resume arresting Eritreans through an administrative procedure. A similar action was taken shortly after the riots in 2023, when dozens of Eritreans were arrested without evidence and transferred to Givon Prison, in preparation for deportation, according to the amendments to the law. This was meant to speed up the law’s implementation and overcome the challenges associated with a lack of evidence.
Following that meeting, the police arrested seven Eritreans in Tel Aviv on suspicion of “conduct that could endanger public security.” The police searched their homes and transferred them to the Population Authority, saying that evidence was found showing that they were regime supporters. The seven were not brought to court for an extension of their detention, but were held for five days until the Population Authority held hearings.
Such a method of operation raises suspicions that the police had detained these men knowing that they could not extend their detention through criminal proceedings. According to the suspicion, the police abused their authority to find evidence showing that the men supported the Eritrean regime, which would then allow them to be held under administrative detention.
Adding to the suspicion are statements made by the police and Interior Ministry in the same hearing that they had discovered a “breakthrough in the steps that need to be taken.” Shortly after that, Chief Superintendent Ashkenazi said that, in every case in which prosecution or an extension of detention was impossible, they would involve the Population Authority and try to “exhaust the opportunities to deport.”
For five of these detainees, proof of regime support consisted of an Eritrean flag found in their homes. One of the detainees expressed his anger at this at the hearing, saying that he opposed the regime and that the flag was the country’s, not the regime’s. The Authority official hearing the case asked the border control officer whether the state intended to deport this person. When he confirmed this, she approved the deportation anyway, even though there was no actual possibility of doing so.
At a court charged with putting people under the state’s guardianship, three detainees said they had been beaten by the police, with one claiming that his house had been damaged. “My father was murdered for the state, and that is why I have a flag,” he said. “It’s like saying someone hates Israel because [he opposes] Bibi.”
In one case, a border control official said that objects and material supporting an organization supporting the regime had been found, with incitement material urging attacks on regime opponents, as well as material suggesting that the detainee was an accomplice to murdering such opponents. Despite this, he was never questioned by the police and never officially charged with such involvement.
Attorney Moshe Zchoot, who represents the detainees, said that cooperation between the police and the Population Authority was illegal and that “people with residence permits who are uninvolved in criminal acts are detained for no reason.” Previous rulings over the years had determined that guardianship-related processes could not replace criminal proceedings, he said.
HaMoked: Center for the Defense of the Individual, a non-profit organization that assists asylum seekers, said that the law’s amendments were an attempt to bypass the United Nations’ Refugee Convention, which Israel is not implementing anyway. “If Israel had a functioning system for dealing with asylum seekers, it could have long rejected requests by regime supporters, who may have chosen to return home voluntarily,” said the organization.
The police said the detentions were legal and that extended detentions were evidence-based. “Each case was considered individually with decisions made based on the evidence and on professional considerations, including our commitment to public security. Cooperation with the Population Authority is part of a general law enforcement procedure. Accusations of violence against detainees will be investigated by the authorized bodies if indications are supporting such claims.”
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