© AP
African migrants protest about the deportation plans in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv

[...] About 60,000 migrants, nearly all from Eritrea and Sudan, crossed Israel's border with Egypt before the government erected a fence along the desert frontier. Many were fleeing persecution and violence.

Roughly 20,000 have already been expelled, according to the Israeli government. But some have lived for years in Israel and many work in low-paying jobs that many Israelis shun. The country has granted asylum to fewer than one per cent of those who have applied and has a years-long backlog of applicants. [...]

Groups of pilots, doctors, writers, rabbis and Holocaust survivors have condemned the mass deportations and called on the government to halt the plan. They say the deportations are unethical and would damage Israel's image as a refuge for persecuted Jews.

A group of Israeli rabbis launched an "Anne Frank-inspired" activist programme to protect African asylum-seekers facing forced expulsion.

But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called the migrants "illegal infiltrators" and claimed their presence was a threat to Israel's social fabric and Jewish character. One government minister has referred to the migrants as "a cancer".

"We have expelled about 20,000 and now the mission is to get the rest out," Mr Netanyahu said.

Multiple sources said staffers at Newsweek are worried for their jobs and have started to reach out to their networks about other employment possibilities. Some were drinking in the office. Katz received a round of applause as she was escorted out of the newsroom, sources said.

Senior writer Matthew Cooper tendered his resignation on Monday as a result of the chaos, saying in a resignation letter obtained by CNN that he has never "seen more reckless leadership."

"It's the installation of editors, not Li and Roe, who recklessly sought clicks at the expense of accuracy, retweets over fairness, that leaves me most despondent not only for Newsweek but for other publications that don't heed the lessons of this publication's fall," Cooper said in the letter.

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