Queens Filipinos brought the fight against ICE, AI, and labor exploitation to the Philippines Consulate in Manhattan.
BY SIDDHARTHA HARMALKAR | news@queensledger.com
MIDTOWN – On July 29, dozens of Filipino workers from Woodside’s “Little Manila” and surrounding areas rallied outside the Philippine consulate, where a coalition of immigrant justice organizations called on the Philippine government to protect migrant workers and withdraw from weapons and AI development deals.
The hours-long rally on 5th Ave brought out over 150 protestors half a day after Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos Jr. televised his annual State of the Nation Address, and two nights after Kuya Raul, a 63-year-old Filipino father and sanitation worker from New Jersey, was detained by ICE.
“There is a myth that we learned from our schooling in the Philippines, from elementary school, that Filipino people did not fight back against Spanish colonialism, did not fight back against U.S. imperialism, and did not fight back against the Japanese occupation in World War II. But the reality is that every step of the way we fought back,” said Mike Legaspi, an organizer with Migrante New York who grew up between Western Queens and the Philippines countryside.
Legaspi started to become involved in community organizing when he was 19 years old.
He said that witnessing farmers go hungry and be targeted by violent gangs armed by landlords in the Philippines pushed him to understand the root causes of poverty, landlessness, and unemployment.
During the protest, he introduced speakers who drew parallels between the struggles faced by workers in the United States, the Philippines, and Latin America, and led the crowd in “Justice for Kuya Rahul!” and “Justice for Tita Linda!” chants.
Linda, a Filipina migrant in Corona who grew up in a suburb of Manila, was a central figure at the protest.
After the oil refinery her husband worked at for decades was shut down, the lack of economic opportunity in the Philippines forced her to search for low-paying jobs abroad despite having graduated with a B.S degree in mathematics from a prestigious university in the country.
She said that she arrived here alone to work as a caregiver, regularly sending money back home to support her husband and their four children, and was only able to go back home to visit them after 20 years. Four years ago, she filed a case against a previous employer to recoup lost earnings after working 24-hour shifts to support an Alzheimer’s patient.
According to Chie, a healthcare worker in Queens from the Central Philippines who gave only her first name, the fight to protect immigrants overlaps with broader movements resisting the development of AI-powered surveillance technology used to target citizens and immigrants alike.
“You’ll see in social media that a lot of people all over the Philippines are protesting against environmental destruction and the health risks that come with it,” said Chie, who organizes with the Association of Filipino Scientists in America.
“We know what the effects of AI are. Even Americans here are against it,” she added, pointing to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent executive order that made New York the first state in the nation to pause construction of new hyperscale data centers.
At the rally, protestors handed out “Cerberus out of the Philippines!” flyers, drawing attention to the Manhattan-based private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, which is working with the US military to build what could become the world’s largest weapons manufacturing hub in the Philippines’ Subic Bay.
In 2025, Cerberus co-founder and former CEO Stephen Feinberg left his position to serve as the US Deputy Secretary of War.
After the speeches, protesters carrying a handmade effigy depicting Feinberg, Donald Trump, and Marcos Jr. as the heads of the mythological three-headed dog that the corporation was named after, led a march from the consulate to Cereberus’ headquarters in Midtown.
Connections between local and international struggles were a common theme at the demonstration, which brought out over half a dozen organizations from across New York and New Jersey.
“We must fight for a sovereign Philippines free from imperialism, national industries, and an economy that genuinely serves the people, not foreign interests, and for genuine agrarian reform that gives land to the farmers,” said an organizer from Anakbayan Queens NY, a Woodside-based Filipino youth organization, during a speech.
Anakbayan is part of the Tanggol Migrante Movement, an alliance of progressive Filipino organizations formed in response to the Trump Administration’s threats of mass deportation.
“We knew that we needed to set up systems to already start to inform our migrant workers, our community members, and our elders about their rights,” said Kort Lee, a community organizer with Tanggol Migrante from Maspeth who organizes caregiver support groups in Woodside.
“So many of the Filipino youth that work in Woodside work at really popular fast food chains like Jollibee and Red Ribbon, and are subjected to intense exploitation in their workplace similar to the caregivers who are subject to 24-hour work days. And they’re not getting any of the support that they deserve from the state,” said Pia, an organizer with Anakbayan whose family migrated from the Philippines in the 1940s. She asked to use a pseudonym for the story.
Pia demanded that the government work to ensure that Filipino youth in the area are able to support themselves and their families, and called on Queens residents to join cultural and community organizations fighting to defend migrants.
