In the middle of a school day: the immigration police arrested an 8-year-old at a school in Jaffa - voila! news

2023-01-15T10:59:14.152Z

Asafo, a non-status whose family is from Ghana, was taken by police who claimed they had only come to question him about his mother and is being held by the Population and Immigration Authority. Tel Aviv Municipality: "The mind and the heart cannot tolerate such sights." The Population Authority: "His mother is an illegal resident who has pledged to leave Israel"

"The teacher told me they shouldn't take him from school."

Asafo (Photo: Courtesy of those photographed)

An eight-year-old boy, without status, whose family is from Ghana, was arrested on Thursday by the immigration police during a school day at a school in Jaffa.

The inspectors called the principal of the school before their arrival and claimed that they intended to question the child about his mother accompanied by a social worker.

Instead of doing this, they put him in the car where the mother was and drove away.

Since then, the boy, Asafo, has been in the hands of the Population and Immigration Authority.

"I went to pick up Asafo from school. The police came with his mother and took him. Then the teacher told me that they shouldn't take him from school," said his father Benjamin.

He and Asafo's mother separated after arriving in Israel, and today he is the main figure responsible for him.

"I don't know what to do with it now. I want Asafo back."

Director of Education Administration in the Tel Aviv Municipality, Shirley Rimon Bracha, addressed the case in a letter she sent to school principals.

"The mind and the heart cannot tolerate such sights, of an eight-year-old child being taken by the police from a school. All the more so not in the Jewish state, nor in the democratic Jewish state," she wrote.

Rimon added that in 2019 Mayor Ron Huldai agreed with the director of the Population and Immigration Authority that no arrests of children would be made during the school year.

"The mayor will try to renew these understandings," she said, instructing the administrators not to cooperate with the Population and Immigration Authority inspectors.

The Population and Immigration Authority stated that Asafo's mother is "an illegal resident from Ghana who has been in Israel for several years, and who was previously asked to leave Israel and even signed an undertaking to do so. The lady has two children who live in Ghana and another child who lives with her in Israel. The above-mentioned woman was arrested about a week ago and released after making an undertaking to report with her son to continue the process.

When she showed up without the child and did not cooperate with the procedure, Enforcement Administration employees and foreigners were forced to accompany her to school, with the coordination of the school principal and with her assistance, the child was taken out to the vehicle in which the mother was staying, and reunited with his mother to continue the process of removing her from Israel."