Fight the fascist Marcos-Trump tandem!
As Trump returns to the White House, Malaya USA remains steadfast in building an organized movement against fascism. We call on the Filipino-American community to join us in the fight against the fascist Trump and Marcos tandem in order to protect the welfare and safety of the Filipino community, and to defend democracy, human rights, and sovereignty for the Philippines.
Trump won his second term as U.S. president promising mass deportations as a cornerstone of his administration. He vows to go even further than his first term, including ordering the U.S. military to conduct raids, especially targeting workplaces with migrant workers. On Trump’s first day in office, he vows to begin his mass deportation program, and to sign over 100 executive orders on border security, deportation, and other policy priorities. With Trump’s dangerous control of all branches of government to serve his interests, the new Congress just passed its first anti-immigrant legislation, the Laken Riley Act, unnecessarily requiring ICE to take custody of undocumented immigrants who have committed nonviolent theft-related crimes like shoplifting. This would expand mandatory detention, waste taxpayer money, and increase family separation and racial profiling.
Undocumented Filipino migrant workers are rightfully afraid. The persistence of stagnant wages and the accelerating cost of living means politicians like Trump are stoking anti-immigrant attitudes and policies that severely impact Filipinos, including the arrest and detention of Dhenmark Francisco and Jovi Esperanza, two Filipino CNAs wrongfully accused of assaulting a patient.
The Philippine government’s official response via Jose Manuel Romualdez, Philippine Ambassador to the U.S. and President Marcos’ cousin, was that undocumented Filipinos should just “self-deport.” This cruel and callous statement willfully ignores the reality that more than 7,500 Filipinos are forced to leave the Philippines every day due to the Philippine government’s refusal to invest in quality jobs, which causes the number of undocumented Filipinos in the U.S. to be estimated as high as 1 in 4. Romualdez exposes the Philippine government’s neglect of its responsibility to protect its own people. With Marcos’ reduction of the 2025 Philippine national budget for migrant services, it will be unable to support a mass return of overseas Filipinos. This is an official slap to the faces of our hard working and exploited kababayan working overseas, whose remittances prop up the Philippine economy, where 2023 remittances amounted to 37% of the entire national 2024 budget.
Romualdez’s useless advice to simply go back and migrate the “correct way,” deceptively presumes that immigration to the United States can be done easily, while 4.3 million cases are pending as of the end of 2023 and legal immigration can take several years or decades. The Philippine government is hanging Filipino families out to dry with no means to earn a decent livelihood back home amid the chronic economic crisis caused by the lack of national industrialization and genuine land reform.
The Marcos regime has already signaled a continued commitment to its subservience to US interests under Trump which means a marked increase in militarization and intensification of war efforts in the region. We can expect intensified fascism, especially attacks through US-backed and funded aerial bombings of peasant communities, counterinsurgency attacks, and violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) - doubling down on what is essentially de facto martial law in the countryside and rural areas of the Philippines. Under Trump’s first administration, he said the Philippines is the “most prime piece of real estate from a military standpoint”. His foreign policy aims squeeze the region for profit through unequal trade agreements, all the while drumming up fear against China, and using the Philippines militarily for a launch pad for war.
With Trump’s return to office imminent, we must band together and build an organized movement against fascism! We call on the Filipino community to join inauguration day protests in your local community and mobilize alongside other Filipino organizations, allies, and community members. Find an action near you: ilps.us/j20-actions
Hands off Filipino workers and migrants!
Migrant rights are human rights!
Defend Filipino migrant workers!
Proteksyon, hindi deportasyon!
Money for jobs and education, not for war or occupation!
From Palestine to the Philippines, end the U.S. war machine!
Fight the fascist Marcos-Trump tandem!
Marcos, Trump, walang pinag iba! Parehong pasista, salot sa masa!
