Two million Filipino migrants reside in the U.S., making up the country’s fourth-largest migrant community. Credit: Illustration by Etta O'Donnell-King/Street Roots
Lewelyn Dixon, a green card holder and lab technician at the University of Washington, was detained at the Seattle airport in February. Known as Auntie Lynn by her family and community, Dixon spent three months in the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington before she won her release.
The detention came after Dixon lived in the United States for over 50 years. Her case baffled advocates.
“How are you going to deport somebody that really doesn’t have any sort of life back in the Philippines anymore?” asked Noah Ajeto, a member of the Filipino migrant alliance Tanggol Migrante.
Ajeto said a letter-writing campaign attesting to Auntie Lynn’s character and time in the U.S. helped win her release. He also credits press conferences, rallies and media exposure that showed community-wide support.
In a video of her release, she says, “I love you Tanggol Migrante!”
Dixon is one of two million Filipino migrants living in the U.S. — the country’s fourth largest migrant community. A program created in the 1970s by then-president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos systematized the export of Filipino citizens for cheap labor in the U.S. The Filipino government is composed of a small, elite group.
Local and national organizations in the U.S. and Philippines advocate for the rights of workers, development of a national industry and recognition of Filipino sovereignty.
Tanggol Migrante is a U.S.-based alliance of Filipino organizations. With over 100 member organizations, its name is a Tagalog phrase that translates to “defend migrants.” Tanggol Migrante fights to defend Filipino migrants through political education, rallies, visitations of currently detained Filipinos and media coverage.
The alliance officially launched in July. Already, Tanggol Migrante is credited with helping secure the release of five detained Filipinos.
“As soon as Trump was elected, we started making preparations for forming this alliance,” Ajeto said. “Because we know that the repression of migrant workers would intensify as soon as he stepped in.”
Christianne Carrillo was born in the Philippines to a Filipino mother and a Filipino-American father. Though she was supposed to be a birthright citizen, her father did not fill out the paperwork correctly. Instead, she was naturalized as a U.S. citizen when she was seven.
Currently the vice chair of GABRIELA Portland, a member organization of Tanggol Migrante, Carrillo says an increasing number of Filipino migrants are seeking support from these organizations.
“Because of the current administration, it’s ramping up so a lot more people are being scared about their status,” Carrillo said. “Which really drives them to look for more people to help them. And that’s what makes us even more busy this year.”
Back in 2018, Larry Nicolas was experiencing a mental health crisis. His mother called 911 and he ended up incarcerated at Washington County Jail. Upon leaving, he was transported to the Northwest ICE Processing Center, or NWIPC, in Tacoma.
In 2019, after nine months of detention, organizers, members of the community, friends and family packed the courtroom during his hearing, and Nicolas was released from detention.
Larry Nicolas at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in 2019. He died in 2021.
“The people there really showed me like, oh, this makes an impact,” said Tabs Gabriel, an organizer who worked on Nicolas’ case. “But it also really frustrated me, because I was like, ‘Why does it take a huge community for people to realize that someone is a human being and doesn’t deserve to be in detention?’”
Gabriel is now a member of Malaya Movement. Malaya started in 2017, as a response to then-president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte’s war on drugs. Member organizations GABRIELA and BAYAN date back to 1984 and 1985 in the Philippines, respectively. Since then, they’ve expanded to the U.S. and abroad.
“That type of activism isn’t just something that organizations like BAYAN and GABRIELA and Malaya do,” said Joy Sales, assistant professor of Asian American studies at California State University in Los Angeles and member of Malaya Movement. “It actually has a longer history that dates back to the first generation of Filipino migrants that came here in the 1920s and 1930s.”
According to Migration Policy Institute, 74% of Filipino migrants are naturalized citizens — meaning they have completed the legal process of gaining citizenship in the U.S. Immediate relation to an American citizen is the pathway for 64% of Filipino migrants. About 18.5%, or 370,000 Filipino migrants in the U.S., are unauthorized citizens.
In March 2025, Jose Manuel Romualdez, the Philippine ambassador to the U.S. told ABC-CBN News there was “quite a number” of Filipinos deported and later in the same interview said the U.S. had so far deported 30 Filipinos this year.
Between April and July 2025, over 100 Filipinos, all cruise ship workers, were deported, according to the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre. Several face a 10-year ban against reentering the U.S.
The federal government detained 139 Filipinos in the 2024-2025 fiscal year and deported 112, According to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s website.
An ongoing history
Tanggol Migrante sees the influx of Filipino migrants within the past 50 years as a forced migration, rather than a choice.
“Filipinos are really vulnerable to leaving their country because there is no national industry to create jobs there, and the majority of Filipinos are peasants and farmers who don’t own land,” Ajeto said.
After the Spanish-American war, the U.S. took over the Philippines as a colony between 1900 and 1934. During that time, Filipinos were free to migrate to the U.S. as “nationals,” and had equal protection under the law. Nationals largely worked on plantations in Hawai’i and California.
When U.S. colonization ended in the Philippines, the Tydings-McDuffie Act of 1934 limited the amount of Filipinos allowed in the U.S. to 50 people per year. Three decades later, the law loosened up again, with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 allowing Filipinos to apply for citizenship, sponsor family members and attend university.
In 1974, then-dictator Ferdinand Marcos created a landmark labor export program in the Philippines that encouraged the migration of workers abroad. Rather than creating in-country industries, this program supported the economy through remittances — money sent back to the homeland from work abroad.
These programs solidified Philippine reliance on foreign aid and a lack of incentive to develop in-country industries. The number of Filipino migrants in the U.S. increased from 105,000 to 501,000 between 1960 and 1980.
“In our world system, it’s the countries that have historically been colonizers and imperialists that have power to influence what goes on in other countries,” Sales said.
Filipino nurses make up 4% of the nursing workforce in the U.S. They accounted for 31.5% of nurse deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Santo Barajas, administrator at the Filipino Bayanihan Center, says many Filipinos feel some sense of loyalty to both the U.S. and the Philippine government.
“The reason that we’re here is because we’ve been set up and, in a lot of ways, groomed to be here as a source of cheap labor,” Barajas said.
Personal remittances from overseas Filipino workers reached a high of $3.7 billion in the month of December 2024, representing 8.3% of the country’s gross domestic product.
Filipino workers in the U.S. are often reliant on their employers and thus susceptible to unfair working conditions.
Portland resident Tita Maria claims she is a victim of $195,000 in wage theft from her Filipino-American employer.
“I don’t want other caregivers to experience what I experience — not to be taken advantage of,” Tita Maria said. “So to learn from my story, and then also the employers also learn from the story that they should not exploit their workers.”
Starting in May, BAYAN Oregon and Migrante Portland launched the fight for Justice for Tita Maria campaign as part of the Care for Caregivers campaign. The campaign received support from the office of Oregon State Representative Thuy Tran, Beaverton City Councilor Nadia Hassan and Portland City Councilors Mitch Green, Candace Avalos and Jamie Dunphy.
“Wage theft is a serious issue that often gets overlooked when the victim is part of marginalized groups whose labor is not given the attention and value it deserves,” Green’s office said in an emailed statement to Street Roots.
After going public with her story, Tita Maria’s former employer threatened to detain her.
“How do we force those in power to allow us to be Filipinos and stand in our own patriotism and in our own country and say the wealth that’s produced here is for the Filipino people here and abroad?” Barajas said.
Duterte’s presidency lasted from 2016 to 2022. His rule was characterized by a “war on drugs” that resulted in the deaths of 12,000 urban poor Filipinos. He is currently in the custody of the International Criminal Court, which will announce charges against him in September related to suspected crimes against humanity.
Despite the country’s economic reliance on remittances, political leaders do little for those entangled in U.S. immigration courts.
“If you are not allowed to stay there, get out,” Duterte said about Filipino migrants in the U.S. during a January 2017 press conference. “If you get caught there and deported, I will not lift a finger.”
Ferdinand Marcos ruled the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. His son, Ferdinand Jr., nicknamed Bongbong, is currently president of the Philippines.
Following the 2024 U.S. election, Jose Manuel Romualdez, the Philippine ambassador to the U.S., encouraged Filipinos to self-deport, saying if they exhaust all legal options, their likelihood of being able to reenter the country is higher than the zero percent chance if they were deported.
Current activism
Established in 2021, the Filipino Bayanihan Center in Southeast Portland is a nonprofit organization providing resources so the community can meet their immediate needs. The organization’s ultimate goal is to assist in political education and work towards real, lasting change for Filipinos in the U.S.
During the pandemic, a group of organizers started delivering care packages and groceries to Filipino families in the area.
Since the increase in ICE presence in Portland, the FBC began offering “know your rights” workshops for the local community.
The Filipino Bayanihan Center offers a pantry with culturally relevant food. There, community members can learn about their health, rights and create community.
“Whether you’re documented or you’re undocumented does not matter,” Barajas said. “You have no birth certificate, it doesn’t matter. You have rights in this country. And, our migrants are just like, you can see it on their faces. They’re like, ‘I too have the right to remain silent?’ That’s new to them.”
The Philippine Consulate General in San Francisco has jurisdiction in Alaska, Northern California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Northern Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington State and Wyoming. Northern California alone is home to 163,000 Filipinos.
According to the Philippine consulate website, the agency’s role is to provide “assistance to distressed Filipinos, economic diplomacy, issuance of passports and visas, civil registration, notarials and other legal services, and the promotion of Philippine culture.”
Sales, the professor at Cal State LA and member of Malaya Movement LA, says holding the consulate accountable is a big part of the alliance’s strategy, since it has the diplomatic power to advocate for Filipinos in the U.S.
Activists say it continuously neglects its responsibility.
According to the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department, nearly half of the operations budget goes to the Consular Assistance to Nationals Program. That is 9.27 billion Philippine pesos or $164 million.
“They very rarely give it out, and if they do give any money or assistance to our detainees, it’s typically very, very small and insufficient numbers that they can’t even use for their own legal funds,” Ajeto said.
In a June 18 press release, Tanggol Migrante urged Filipino ambassador Romualdez to funnel money to legal funds and assistance to help detained Philippine nationals. In the case of Maximo Londonio, a lawful permanent resident held at NWIPC earlier this year, months of pressure resulted in no legal aid. The support and activism of Tanggol Migrante helped lead to Londonio’s eventual release.
Representatives of the consulate travel outside their main location in San Francisco on outreach missions to areas of their jurisdiction. Tanggol Migrante planned to be present at the consulate’s most recent outreach mission, in Tacoma on August 16 and 17.
Members of the consulate attended Auntie Lynn’s release at NWIPC. In a video of her release an activist says, “We also expose the neglect of the government that is supposed to protect them. Not only is the U.S. government being held accountable by us as Tanggol Migrante, we are also holding the Philippine consulate for failing to support Auntie Michelle Auntie Lynn, Kuya Max, Kuya Dante and many more.”
In the video of her release, organizers shouted at the vehicle transporting members of the Philippine consulate: “Philippine consulate: do your job.”
The Philippine Embassy called Tanggol Migrante “insincere” in a May 23 press release and said it would not accommodate Tanggol Migrante’s request for a meeting.
Carrillo, the vice chair of GABRIELA Portland, said organizations like Tanggol Migrante and GABRIELA try to provide resources the consulate cannot or will not provide.
“It’s a very surface level of helping Filipinos, rather than the gut issues that they’re having trouble with,” Carrillo said. “Are they finding jobs? Are they getting health care? Are they getting deported and getting cared for?”
Organizations themselves take on different roles within the alliance. Tanggol Migrante, GABRIELA and BAYAN hold protests at detention centers and press conferences, according to Ajeto. Other organizations in the alliance have more expertise in supporting the community through faith, health and political education.
All are ready to provide assistance to Filipino migrants, regardless of their legal status in the U.S.
Inez, who asked Street Roots to leave out her last name, first migrated from the Philippines to the U.S. in 2022 to get her master’s degree.
She’s now an art professor, but her U.S. employer retracted its offer to sponsor her visa, and she anticipates losing her job in December.
“What I found is that you can do everything right. And I thought I did everything right,” Inez said.“I came here on the right visa. I got my job legally. But if they just decide you’re dispensable, they’re gonna stop you.”
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