COVID-19 IMPACTS ON IMMIGRATION DETENTION: GLOBAL RESPONSES for health services, food, and shelter.15 Many released migrants are also primary victims of the country’s mandatory and indefinite detention system. The United Nations calls indefinite detention as arbitrary detention, a notorious violation of international human rights law. Due to the protracted and repeated deprivation of liberty and freedom in detention, released migrants experience significant risks not just because of the pandemic but also because of the detention-specific health risks that these detained individuals were forced to endure. Depression, post-traumatic stress, high blood pressure, and strokes are disproportionately prevalent among long-term detainees.16 Furthermore, due to protracted isolation and disconnection from outside communities, many released migrants face loss of kinship and community ties. They are also under constant surveillance of government agencies. What the COVID-19 pandemic clearly reveals are the prevailing vulnerabilities, especially the deprivation of the right to have rights, of both detained and temporarily released migrants. The intensification of vulnerabilities of both detained and released migrants is rooted in Japan’s draconian detention policy. ISA has implemented an excessively inflexible and coercive policy that reinforces mandatory and indefinite immigration detention. Such an illiberal detention policy is tied to the hyper-criminalization of undocumented migrants and asylum-seekers, especially after Tokyo won the bid for the 2020 Olympic games (which were subsequently postponed due to the pandemic) in 2013.17 The statistical presence of “illegal aliens” was considered a great threat to public safety, especially in light of the country’s proclamation that it is “the safest country in the world.” 18 On a wide range of indicators – provisional release approvals, approval rates of Special Permission to Stay, and indefinite detention – the conditions of migrant detainees worsened severely. The number of provisional release approvals declined by half between 2016 and 2018.19 The number of detained migrants receiving Special Permission to Stay (SPS), Japan’s de facto amnesty program, has also significantly declined. In 2004, there were 13,239 undocumented migrants under deportation order who received SPS. However, only 1,255 undocumented migrants were granted SPS in 2017. 20 In 2019, prior to the pandemic, the number of long-term detainees was at a record high. As a share of the total number of detained migrants in Japan, long-term detainees comprised 50 percent: 679 out of 1253 detainees were held more than 6 months in June 2019. 21 Furthermore, the number of detainees who were held more than 18 months increased from 238 in July 2018 to 393 in June 2019. 22 Overall, data indicate that the period leading up to the Olympics saw a sharp ratcheting up of punitive measures against detained migrants. In June 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Justice that governs ISA, released a proposal on immigration detention and deportation based on recommendations by the expert committee for the Justice Minister (Shiteki Kondankai). 23 The expert committee was originally set up in October 2019 after the tragic death of the Nigerian detainee in June 2019 as well as the widespread hunger strikes by long-term detainees between June and September 2019. 24 One of the most controversial proposals was the criminalization of long-term detainees, as well as of those who went missing after they obtained provisional release. Instead of recognizing the lack of due process and the unlawfulness of indefinite detention, the proposal blamed longterm detainees’ “unwillingness to return home (kikoku kihi).” 25 The Japan Federation of Bar Associations was critical of this report, noting that long-term detainees’ own reasons for remaining in Japan were dismissed. 26 The majority of these individuals are asylum-seekers who seek protection from potential political and social violence, as well as long-term residents who have already established close biological, kinship, and cultural ties to Japan’s local communities. The proposal by the Ministry of Justice ignores these compounded humanitarian concerns and ends up re-emphasizing Japan’s consistent lack of concern for the rights of migrants. Thus, data on the excessive violence of indefinite detention prior to the pandemic, as well as the Ministry of Justice’s recent proposal to criminalize long-term detainees, strongly indicate that the government’s deep antipathy toward migrant detainees’ rights remains consistent. The government’s decision, at the height of the global pandemic, to release a large number of detained migrants should really be understood as a very small temporary measure, induced only by a uniquely devastating health crisis. In the absence of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pattern of treatment of migrant detainees, as witnessed by the death of Sunny, the Nigerian immigrant, has not fundamentally changed. KAZUE TAKAMURA Institute for the Study of International Development McGill University 15 https://mainichi.jp/articles/20200422/k00/00m/040/316000c 16 Based on my meetings with long-term detainees in the East Japan Immigration Center between 2016 and 2019. Some cases eventually led to deaths in detention facilities (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-detention-drugs-special-report-idUSKCN0WA1WA). 17 https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2013/sep/07/tokyo-host-2020-olympic-games 18 http://www.moj.go.jp/ENGLISH/m_hisho06_00008.html 19 https://www.toben.or.jp/message/pdf/200114ikensho.pdf Tokyo Bar Association, “A proposal to set an upper limit on the period of detention as well as to apply relevant international human rights norms to foreigners who are not able to be removed from the country,” January 2020, p.3 https://www.toben.or.jp/message/ pdf/200114ikensho.pdf. 20 Ministry of Justice, Japan. 2005. Immigration Control in Recent Years. page 59. http://www.moj.go.jp/content/000007280.pdf Ministry of Justice, Japan. 2019. Immigration Control in Recent Years. page 66. http://www.moj.go.jp/content/001241964.pdf 21 https://digital.asahi.com/articles/ASM8N64P3M8NUPQJ00P.html; Tokyo Bar Association, January 2020 https://www.toben.or.jp/message/pdf/200114ikensho.pdf. 22 Tokyo Bar Association, January 2020, p.2. 23 http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13494829 24 https://www.nichibenren.or.jp/library/pdf/document/opinion/2020/opinion_200318_4.pdf 25 http://www.moj.go.jp/content/001322460.pdf https://www.nichibenren.or.jp/library/pdf/document/opinion/2020/opinion_200318_4.pdf 26 https://www.nichibenren.or.jp/library/pdf/document/opinion/2020/opinion_200318_4.pdf 32 International Detention Coalition and Western Sydney University