Netanyahu says most African migrants are ‘illegal infiltrators,’ not refugees

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows to remove the vast majority of African migrants currently residing in the country, saying at Sunday’s cabinet meeting that only “a tiny fraction of them are refugees.” The remainder, he tells cabinet ministers, are “illegal infiltrators.”

“I want to emphasize, this is the problem. Not refugees, but illegal labor migrants. And we have the right, as any country does, to watch our borders and remove from our borders anyone who comes here illegally,” he says.

He goes on to announce the formation of a “special team of ministers that will hold its first meeting next week together with representatives of the residents [of southern Tel Aviv], among other areas [where many African migrants reside]. We will meet every few weeks in the first months to look for practical solutions to this problem. The main goal will be to return these neighborhoods to their residents and to send away from Israel, just as we’ve already done with 20,000 [migrants], all the illegal infiltrators whose place is not here.”