This paper addresses the urgent and understudied issue of how to protect migrants stranded by disasters in their countries of destination, focusing on the roles of institutions and state actors in migrant receiving nations. It explains how migrant displacement can be understood in terms of international norms concerning internal displacement. Then, it argues that the migrant-receiver state bears the primary responsibility for protecting displaced migrants who fit the category of internally displaced persons (IDPs and assisting their short-and longer-term recoveries. A case study of Japan illustrates how these concepts are adopted in a real situation.