African Migrants in Israel: Israeli high court orders release of imprisoned migrants

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Further afield, there's still no resolution for tens of thousands of Eritrean and Sudanese asylum seekers in Israel threatened by a government deportation order. As Israel's government scrambled to negotiate a last minute deal with Uganda for receiving asylum seekers, the high court ordered the release of hundreds imprisoned in a desert jail. CGTN's Stephanie Freid reports.

Relief.

Up to this moment, these Sudanese and Eritrean men were subject to unlimited prison terms. Their collective crime: Refusing to sign papers agreeing to deportation to Rwanda or Uganda.

But relief may be temporary.

ASYLUM SEEKER "I don't know where I'll go now, they told me not to work in Tel Aviv, Beer Sheba, Eilat, seven cities. I don't know what I'll do."

Israel's government backed out of a deal with the UN's refugee agency to relocate sixteen thousand of approximately thirty-nine thousand asylum seekers in Israel to Canada, Germany and Italy and absorb the rest.

The Israeli government is reportedly working overtime to cut a deal with Uganda to take about five hundred asylum seekers - a mere eight percent of the thirty-nine thousand in Israel.

AVI OFER HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST, THE NEGEV DESERT "There will be no deportation. Too many Israelis are against the deportation, it's against the law, it's against the international law. There will be no deportation."

Israel's high court ruled that without a deal with a third country, these men should go free.

STEPHANIE FREID SAHARONIM PRISON, THE NEGEV DESERT ISRAEL But they're not truly free. They don't have any official status in Israel and at any moment, another deportation order or agreement with a third country could land them right back in prison. Stephanie Freid, CGTN, Saharonim Prison, the Negev Desert, Israel.