Before he was summoned to Holot, Israel’s open-air detention center for asylum-seekers, Gebremeskel Tsehaya, known as Gary, worked as a cook frying falafel and chopping salad at a small restaurant in Tel Aviv. Because Gary is a single Eritrean man, Israel’s government says he will soon face a choice: accept a plane ticket out of the country or go to prison. African asylum-seekers are a crucial source of labor in the kitchens of nearly every Tel Aviv eatery, and indignant restaurant owners have waged a battle with the government over its intensifying campaign to deport them.

For years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has openly discussed his intentions to expel the roughly 40,000 African migrants currently living in Israel — a population comprised of 27,500 Eritreans, 7,900 Sudanese and 2,600 citizens of other African countries, according to Israel’s Interior Ministry. But in January, the ministry advanced its plan to deport 20,000 of the population by 2020, starting this April. Migrants began receiving early February notices proclaiming they will face indefinite imprisonment if they do not self-deport within 60 days.

Israel’s Restaurants and Bars Association said its 800-member businesses employ around 10,000 African migrant workers washing dishes, cleaning and cooking the city’s tasty fare — from Thai food to Israel’s characteristic blend of European and Mediterranean cuisine. With Israelis unwilling to fill such jobs, restaurant owners have been lobbying the government in recent months against deportation, advocating instead that they be granted residency or another more permanent status. “Without them, we can't run our businesses, simple as that,” Shai Berman, the director of the association, told Al-Monitor. “If the chef doesn't come to work, the restaurant can stay open. But if no one is doing the dishes, the work will stop.”

Israel is a signatory to the International Refugee Convention of 1951 and effectively recognizes the possible danger of ending Sudanese and Eritrean migrants back to their homelands, but in most of the cases, it refuses to grant refugee status for that reason alone. As of the end of 2017, according to data provided to Al-Monitor by the Israeli Population and Immigration Authority, 15,613 people had submitted requests for asylum. Just 11 have been granted refugee status, a number Israeli organization African Refugee Development Center (ARDC) cites as one of the lowest in the Western world.