Enforcement failure: deportation from Israel after 22 years of illegal stay

A dramatic decision by the Supreme Court has exposed a prolonged failure of enforcement authorities in Israel, after it was revealed that a Philippine national, Raquel Vilmor, had been in the country illegally for 22 years without the authorities taking any action against her. Justice Daphne Barak-Erez summarily rejected her request to appeal the ruling requiring her to leave the country, and determined that she must depart Israel.

Vilmor, born in 1972, entered Israel legally in 2001 as a nursing worker, and her permit expired in 2004. That same year, she gave birth to a son, who she claims is the son of an Israeli citizen. In 2010, she requested to regularize her status based on a government decision, and when the Population and Immigration Authority instructed her to exhaust the procedures through the Israeli paternity track, she refrained from acting and continued to stay in the country illegally.

Only last May was Vilmor detained during enforcement activity by the Population Authority, which ordered her removal from the country and her detention. Her appeals to the Appeals Tribunal and the Tel Aviv District Court were rejected, among other reasons because she had taken the law into her own hands for many long years. Her attempt to argue for the first time in the District Court that she has been in a relationship with an Israeli citizen for 14 years was also rejected due to slim chances of appeal.

Justice Barak-Erez clarified in her decision that there is no room for exceptional intervention in temporary relief. She noted that Vilmor's son is now an adult who can act on his own to regularize his status, and determined that due to the prolonged taking of the law into her own hands on her part, the balance of convenience does not tilt in her favor. However, as a gesture of goodwill, the judge ruled that Vilmor, who was represented by Adv. Ilan Leibovitz, must leave Israel by October 5.