Illegal immigration is one of the few consensus issues in Israel. Of 27 countries surveyed, Israel is second only to Greece in its opposition (presumably aliyah excepted) to immigration, a 2018 Pew poll reported. Yet, despite that sentiment, Israel’s government has struggled to resolve the issue.

A major cause for the failure is the interference of left-wing civil society groups whose efforts to stymie government solutions have found a sympathetic ear in Israel’s Supreme Court, sitting as the High Court of Justice.

There are a half dozen NGOs active in the immigration field, Yonatan Yakobovich, founder and director of the Israeli Immigration Policy Center, told JNS. Among them are ASSAF—Aid Organization for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Israel, the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants and HIAS Israel.

“HIAS Israel is one of the more active ones,” Yakobovich said. “It continues while others have faded, due to what I assume is a strong funding stream from its mothership in America.”

HIAS Israel is a branch of HIAS, a Maryland-headquartered organization, which according to its website, “provides vital services to refugees, asylum seekers, and other forcibly displaced and stateless persons.” It operates in 22 countries, including in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Europe.

HIAS Israel makes the most impact in the legal realm. Yakobovich estimated that some 1,500 Sudanese illegal migrants received Israeli residency due to HIAS petitions. HIAS Israel has even successfully advocated for municipal voting rights for illegal aliens.

It enjoys the support of the Supreme Court, which has intervened in every single immigration-related Cabinet decision since 2006, he said. The court struck down three amendments to the “Prevention of Infiltration Law” between 2013 and 2015, and in 2020, it disallowed a fourth law requiring employers to withhold part of an illegal migrant’s salary. This was designed to encourage self-deportation as the money would be returned once the worker permanently left the country.

“These laws were actually pretty effective, but they were all struck down by the Supreme Court due to NGOs’ petitions,” Yakobovich said.

HIAS Israel’s critics say that while the group works to promote rights for what it terms “asylum seekers,” it shows no compassion for Israeli citizens in neighborhoods such as south Tel Aviv, where illegal aliens, mostly young men, concentrate, bringing with them social pathologies, including drug use, criminality and youth gangs.

“May their names be erased,” said Sheffi Paz, a south Tel Aviv activist leading the struggle against illegal migrants where she lives. “HIAS Israel is completely on the side of the migrants.”

“What drives me crazy about groups like HIAS Israel is that when they talk about children, they only mean migrant children,” Paz said.

A government subcontractor

That HIAS Israel works against Jewish interests is a recurring theme voiced by critics of the organization and its “mothership” in the United States.

Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a U.S.-based group that seeks to reduce overall immigration in the States to “more manageable levels,” told JNS, “Not only has HIAS ceased to be a Jewish organization, they’re helping people who are undermining the basic interests of Jews in the United States.”

HIAS was founded in New York in 1881 to help Jewish immigrants and refugees resettle in the U.S., but it has “outlived its raison d’être,” Mehlman said. Instead of going out of business, it found new ways to make itself relevant. Now it helps anyone enter the U.S.

“HIAS isn’t a charitable organization, the way we think of a charitable organization, which raises money from donors, and then supports causes those donors care about,” Mehlman said. “They’re a government subcontractor. They receive money from the feds to help migrants receive benefits and get settled.”

Federal grants to HIAS leapt during the Biden administration, increasing to more than $100 million annually during President Joe Biden’s final two years in office, according to USASpending.gov.

 In January 2025, upon taking office, the Trump administration suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), which provided money to HIAS and similar organizations. HIAS, along with other groups, brought suit against the administration in February 2025, challenging the suspension.

In 2014, HIAS dropped “Hebrew” from its name. HIAS had stood for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. It’s now known only as HIAS.

Even so, 12 years later, HIAS continues to describe itself on its website as a “global Jewish humanitarian organization.” HIAS Israel’s website uses the identical wording in Hebrew.

Both HIAS and HIAS Israel declined repeated requests for comment by JNS.

This desire to have it both ways, as both an international refugee group and a specifically Jewish one, doesn’t sit well with Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), who has urged HIAS to stop its misleading claims that it is a Jewish organization.

“Ninety-nine percent of the people they help are non-Jews, and most of them are Muslims,” Klein told JNS. “They bring Jew-hating Muslims to America. If HIAS is Jewish, why does it bring people who hate Jews to our country? New York City has gone from 100,000 Muslims to a million Muslims.”

HIAS’s policy clearly encourages Muslim immigration. In 2017, it sued the Trump administration when it imposed a ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.

In 2015, HIAS criticized the Obama administration for not letting in enough Syrian refugees. “Increasing the total number of refugees from 70,000 to 85,000 for next year and to 100,000 for the year after is a nice symbolic gesture,” Mark Hetfield, the president of HIAS, said at the time. “It is a baby step in the right direction. But it is not leadership.”

“Hetfield isn’t even Jewish. Everyone thinks he’s Jewish. He’s a Presbyterian Christian,” Klein said. People can be forgiven for thinking Hetfield is Jewish as he appears to present himself as such. “When Hetfield speaks and when he writes articles, he always brings in the Torah. He says, ‘The Talmud says,’ as if he’s a Jew. He does that all the time,” Klein said.

In a Jan. 29, 2017, interview on MSNBC, Hetfield gave the impression that he was Jewish, saying of protests against the Trump ban, “It certainly galvanized my community. The week of the inauguration we had 1,700 rabbis from 48 different states and the District of Columbia sign a statement that we need to keep our doors open for refugees.”

Klein is particularly irked by Hetfield’s claims that HIAS’s board is “100% Jewish,” when he himself is not.

Klein has argued that HIAS should be ejected from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations as it’s no longer a Jewish group. “It’s absolutely wrong. They have no business being a member. They’re a Muslim-African organization,” he said. “They help non-Jewish Muslims and Africans. They don’t do anything for Jews. They hurt Jews.”

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