Ahead of Marcos’s State Visit to Japan, DOJ vows to act on deportation issues
JUSTICE Secretary Jesus Crispin Remulla assured the Japanese government last Wednesday that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will expeditiously seek the removal of all legal obstacles to the deportation of four Japanese nationals before the state visit by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to Japan in the middle of February.
The four Japanese detainees currently under the custody of the Bureau of Immigration (BI) are being sought by Tokyo for deportation for their alleged involvement in various crimes in Japan.
The Japanese government has taken a keen interest on a certain “Luffy” who is believed to be one of the four detainees and believed to be the ringleader of a robbery group responsible for a series of robberies in Japan.
According to reports, “Luffy” gave instructions to his cohorts through an encrypted messaging app while under detention in Taguig.
During a news briefing last Monday, Remulla said two officials from the Japanese embassy went to the DOJ in the afternoon of January 30 to relay the request of their government to have the found Japanese detainees repatriated and deported to Japan.
Remulla, however, noted that three of them still have criminal cases pending in various courts.
Most of the cases, according to Remulla, involved crimes under the VAWC (Anti-violence Against Women and Children) Law (Republic Act 9262).
Limited time
REMULLA noted that the government cannot deport anybody with pending criminal cases.
“We will deport who we can deport legally. When the request came yesterday, we were working on limited time. But my commitment to everybody is we will deport who we can deport immediately,” Remulla said.
“It’s a better way to treat it because we do not want this trip to be marred by other questions. We want the state visit to be the more important matter rather than of course the narrative of crime stories,” he added.
Remulla said he expects these cases to be solved within the next few weeks or prior to the trip of the President.
He also expressed the possibility that the criminal cases filed against these Japanese detainees were fabricated to prolong their stay in the country.
“But we are of the impression that these cases were invented or are not real cases. There were contrived cases filed against them just to keep them in the Philippines. They just use this law because it is a very, very well debated law and a very, very popular law among activists that’s why they use the law to file against the Japanese subjects,” Remulla said.
Going after lawyers
IN light of this, the DOJ chief vowed to go after lawyers who conspired with foreign nationals with pending deportation orders by filing contrived cases in order to prevent their deportation.
“This is part of the corruption ring that operates within the BI. All of these legal services being offered by law offices do not stop at tactics which are not supposed to be used in cases like this but many lawyers think it is okay to do that,” Remulla said. “The DOJ will not tolerate behavior like this from lawyers.
He vowed that the DOJ will file the disbarment of lawyers “who insist on using these tactics that will delay the proceedings.”
Remulla also said heads will roll soon in the Bureau of Immigration after it was discovered that detainees are being allowed to use gadgets such as cellular phones while inside its detention facilities.
Video footage of the detainees, according to Remulla, showed some of them recording videos and posting them in their social media pages using their gadgets.
“The Bureau of Immigration has confiscated several telephones and one of the Japanese nationals had six iphones in his possession. This is a subject of an investigation now within the Bureau of Immigration because these cannot be tolerated,” Remulla said.
“This reeks of corruption and the people who are responsible for the behavior of all the people under the detention will be dealt with severely once proven that they did not do their jobs in ensuring that the use of communication tools are only used for lawyers and family calls,” Remulla said.