On April 4, 2004, the government decided on the establishment of the "Directorate of Population and Entry into Israel" in the Ministry of Interior, and determined that both the powers of the Israel Police in matters of border control and the authority unit for foreign workers in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs would be transferred to the responsibility of the Director of Population.

The authority has a number of employees in charge of enforcing immigration laws on employers (a position previously filled by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Employment), inspectors whose job it is to arrest illegal residents (which was previously the responsibility of the police) and employees of the population manager, who have the authority to order removal from the country.

Ganot had served as prisons commissioner and prior to that as head of the Immigration authority, where his employees were known for engaging in violent altercations with migrant workers.

[8] In May 2014 Lod District Court Vice President Avraham Yaakov ordered a Swedish tourist of Eritrean origin be released from detention and that the Population, Immigration and Border Authority pay her damages of 25,000 shekels.

The judge commented on the implications of PIBA poor decision-making: “Officials of the respondent acted arbitrarily and in an extremely unreasonable manner,” he said.

A spokesperson for PIBA denied that the deletion of Muslim names was racist or discriminatory and that it had simply released the information that people wanted.