Israeli court orders Filipina toddler deported

JERUSALEM—An Israeli court on Thursday turned down an appeal against the deportation of a four-year-old girl born in Israel and her mother, a Filipina migrant worker, public radio said.

It quoted immigration authorities as saying they would be flown out of the country “as soon as possible.”

Stacey Castileon and her daughter Ofek had originally been put on a plane last week but were taken off as it waited on the tarmac, after the court ordered an 11th-hour stay of execution in response to an appeal by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI).

Although the child’s mother was working without a permit, her Filipino father had been living in Israel legally for over a decade, ACRI said, arguing that made Ofek a legal resident of Israel.

But the court rejected their argument, although it criticized the immigration authority’s handling of the case, in which the mother and child were taken from a jail to the airport late at night without the father’s knowledge.

“Human beings are not livestock,” the radio quoted judge Avraham Yaakov as saying.