More than 300 people marched in a Filipinx-led protest on Friday denouncing immigration crackdowns against migrants, including Filipinx migrants held in Immigration and Customs enforcement custody.ย
โWe’re here today to denounce all the attacks on migrants rights, all the attacks on Filipino activists by the Marcos-U.S. dictatorship,โ said activist Brandon Lee, an organizer with the San Francisco Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines.
โWe have Filipino migrants who aren’t being assisted by their Philippine government, who are being arrested and deported by the Trump administration,” said Andan Bonifacio, a Stanford University graduate and Filipinx activist.
Filipinx residents in the country, he said, “are among those being targeted by the ICE crackdown right now, including crew ship workers, hospital workers, caregivers.โ
โWe went to the U.S. immigration court. We had speakers talk about how immigrants are being pulled off the street, theyโre being pulled out of the courthouse, abducted and deported,โ added Lee, a San Francisco native with Chinese ancestry who was shot four times by the Filipinx military for his work as an activist. The attack left him quadriplegic.ย
The government of the Philippines, organizers said in a statement, โhas offered little to no assistance to Filipino migrants in detention.โ
The number of Filipinx people in San Francisco immigration court has decreased dramatically since the late 1990s, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
In 2024, 82 Filipinx people went through immigration court in San Francisco, down from a high of 531 in 1998, according to TRAC. Across California, migrants from the Philippines are the ninth most populous in ICE proceedings, behind Colombia and ahead of Armenia.ย
Outside of the San Francisco immigration court, speaker Pilar Castille denounced ICE tactics against her countrymen. โTrump directs ICE agents to terrorize migrant communities to kidnap our people. Filipino migrants are left to languish in ICE detention while the Philippine state washes their hands of responsibility.โ
The consulate did not immediately provide a request for comment, but in July said in a statement that allegations of the government neglecting Filipinx immigrants in ICE custody were inaccurate.
โConsulate officials conducted an onsite visit and welfare check on Filipino nationalsโ held by ICE, it wrote.
The protest, which was organized by BAYAN USA, the Malaya Movement, ICHRP-US and the Tanggol Migrante Movement, also took aim at the Filipinx consulate and denounced the government for corruption, among other things.
The activists started at Union Square around noon and marched towards 100 Montgomery St., San Franciscoโs immigration court, before heading to the Philippine Consulate on Sutter Street. The march ended at around 3:30 p.m.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated Brandon Lee is paraplegic. He is quadriplegic.
Can we please not be copycats? We are Filipinos, not Filipinos. Just stop it. Ang pangit. Ang sages. We Filipinos are more elevated in our communication. We donโt shy away from our identity as Filipinos. If you look at our pronouns, we are way ahead of society. The word Filipino is not purely intended for one gender. It is for all Filipinos.
His name is Brandon Lee.
Really impressed with this, respect to those who are in the streets doing something (anything!) about rapidly creeping fascism in the USA. If any participants are reading this, thank you and keep going! My minimal knowledge of the Philippines prevents me from commenting on the situation over there.