16-year policy swept away with less than a week for transition.
On January 26, the Japanese government’s Immigration Services Agency, the branch of the Ministry of Justice in charge of immigration regulations, officially announced that it would be abolishing its practice of informing lawyers representing foreign residents facing deportation of their deportation date in advance. Considering the significance of this shift in policy, one might expect there to be a substantial amount of time until the changeover. However, taking into account that the government is doing away with an advance notice, perhaps it’s very much in keeping with the spirit of the decision that the new policy with the change that the new policy went into effect on February 1, less than a week after the announcement was made.
The system of advance notification to lawyers was put into place in September of 2010. Under that framework, lawyers representing foreigners facing deportation from Japan could request that, if the Immigration Services Agency had set a deportation date for their client, they would be informed of the date approximately two months ahead of time (specifically, they would be told in which week of which month the deportation was scheduled for). This concession was made to provide ample time for foreigners and their lawyers to discuss and explore ways to contest the deportation, if that was the client’s wish.
The Immigration Services Agency has now said that this policy has had “harmful” side effects. Since 2019, the agency says that seven foreigners whose lawyers had been sent notices then disappeared within the two months leading up to their deportation dates. The agency also claims that some lawyers who had been notified about their clients’ deportation dates then posted the information on social media, leading to spikes in phone calls and complaints to Immigration Services Agency offices as the dates drew near.
While it’s understandable that the agency would want to prevent making it easier for scheduled deportees to escape removal from the country, there’s nothing illegal about people voicing their displeasure with government policies, provided it’s done in a peaceful manner. Though the Immigration Services Agency is still required to inform foreigners directly of their scheduled deportation date, such notices only have to be sent out one month in advance.
The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has decried the abolition of advance notice to lawyers, saying that the narrowed one-month window and indirect path in which the information must now come to them do not provide sufficient time to prepare a legal challenge to the deportation order, and thus constitute a violation of the individual’s right to a fair trial as guaranteed by Article 32 of the Constitution of Japan, which states “No person shall be denied the right of access to the courts.”
The shift in notification policy didn’t come as a complete surprise, as the Immigration Services Agency voiced its intent to do away with the two-month lawyer notifications in July of 2025. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations had been in talks with the agency to try to steer it away from that course since then, though, and the agency’s official decision wasn’t made public knowledge until January 26. In a statement made the following day by Reiko Fuchigami, chairwoman of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, she asserted that “advance notices to lawyers are an important mechanism for guaranteeing the right to a fair trial” and that “It will be extremely difficult to file [an appeal] or take other legal action within a single month,” but for now the agency’s decision appears to be final.
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