Ministers vote to close Holot migrant detention center

Ministers vote unanimously to shutter the southern Holot detention center for African migrants within some three months and to step up deportations of what the government calls “infiltrators.”

The decision comes after the High Court of Justice in late August backed Israel’s controversial practice of deporting illegal migrants to third countries — identified in media reports as Rwanda and Uganda — and vetoed the practice of detaining them in Holot until they agree to leave.

“Our policy toward infiltrators is three-staged,” Netanyahu tells ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting. “First stage — stopping them [from coming into the country]. We’ve built a fence and legislated laws that, together, have completely stopped the flood of infiltrators.

“The second stage is deporting them. We’ve deported around 20,000 of the existing infiltrators in different ways. Now it’s the third stage — increased deportations.”

Those who refuse to leave will be jailed.

On Friday, the UN refugee agency expressed “serious concern” over Israel’s plan to deport thousands of African migrants in the coming months.

In a statement, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said it was “seriously concerned by proposals announced yesterday… Under these proposals, Eritreans and Sudanese asylum-seekers and refugees would be compelled to accept relocation to countries in Africa or face imprisonment in Israel.”