In a dingy apartment in Kawaguchi, Saitama, Turkish Kurd Meryem Kosan and her children Merve, 4, and Mehmet Serxwebijn, 12 months, wait for their father Erdal to come home.

Eerdal has been locked up in a detention center for illegal immigrants and visa overstayers in Ibaraki Prefecture for the past three months.

Meryem says they were managing to scratch out a life for themselves in Japan, where Erdal worked as a demolition laborer on day-wages, until the authorities told them their asylum applications had been rejected and took them both into custody.