Photo credit: i24 News | Oded Balilty

Earlier this month, Israel criticized Trump's immigration reform while preparing their own ultimatum for asylum seekers that even included paying them to leave. The Goldwater reported last year on how the country of Israel planned to <a href="https://www.thegoldwater.com/news/12329-Israel-To-Send-Back-40-000-African-Refugees">send back 40,000 African refugees.</a>

Israel even offered to <a href="https://thegoldwater.com/news/17540-US-Israeli-Jewish-Organizations-Blast-Trump-For-Immigration-Reform-While-Israel-Set-To-Deport-Tens-O">pay asylum seekers to leave</a> and threatened to jail those who refused. Now, those asylum-seekers who are refusing to leave Israel are being jailed.

Tuesday, seven Eritrean asylum-seekers who refused deportation were jailed as Israel follows through on its enforcement of a controversial policy aimed at deporting 40,000 African migrants and asylum-seekers from the country.

The seven asylum-seekers were summoned for pre-deportation hearings Tuesday and were immediately escorted to Saharonim Prison for fear they would attempt to flee the proceedings. In response to the move, asylum-seekers being held at the open Holot Detention Facility went on a hunger strike.

The legal department at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants plans to appeal the men's imprisonment. The seven who were jailed were among 200 unmarried, childless working-age Eritrean men issued deportation notices last month.

The notices gave the men until the end of March to accept a one-time payment of $3,500 and a plane ticket to another country or they would face indefinite imprisonment. That $3,500 and the plane ticket is probably looking mighty fine right about now for those seven men.

Israel issued another 400 deportation notices on February 4 and informed the recipients they would be sent to an unnamed African nation which as "developed tremendously over the last decade" and has a relatively "stable government."

It seems Israel is serious about their immigration policy and isn't going to back down, maybe the United States could benefit from adopting some of the same policies.

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Source: https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/israel/168193-180221-israel-jails-first-asylum-seekers-for-refusing-deportation-orders