On a morning in mid-September, Utinan Won hugged his mother and then watched as she passed through departures at Tokyo¡¯s Narita airport on her way to Bangkok.
Two and a half months earlier, judges in a Tokyo court upheld deportation orders against 16-year-old Utinan and his mother, Lonsan Phaphakdee, both Thai nationals living in Japan on provisional release status.
But, in their ruling, the judges laid out a path for Utinan to stay in Japan ¡ª if his mother left the country.
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