He now holds a temporary visa that he is able to renew every three months. He, his wife and their six children have settled into a modest apartment in a rundown district of Tel Aviv near the city's bus station.

Ahmed, like thousands of others, braved the journey across the Sinai desert, dodging Egyptian border guards who routinely shoot and kill those caught trying to cross to Israel.

On Israel's border with Egypt is the Israeli community of Kadish Barnea. Residents Avishai and Jolanda Pinchas, sitting on a porch on their sprawling property, look across a few hundred meters to an Egyptian guard tower and the barbed wire fence that marks the border.

They say they often awakened at night by the sound of gunfire.

"You know how many times they kill refugees here? It's horrible," Avishai Pinchas said. "When we hear these things, we know things are going on very close by. We can really hear it. Many times."

The couple in the past have taken in scores of hungry and injured Sudanese migrants and allowed them to stay in some bungalows on their property. At one point, they provided food, medicine, and shelter to as many as 55 men, women, and children.

They stopped doing so after Israeli border police started the practice of picking up migrants and taking them to a detention center where they are kept while authorities check to make sure they are not terrorists.

The flow of migrants has continued. Officials say they are crossing at a rate of several hundred per week. Once past the Egyptian border guards, the migrants wait along the highway for Israeli police to pick them up and take them to the detention center.