Many Filipino healthcare workers in the US live in fear of ICE: 'This is my place of work. I should feel safe' [View all]
Source: The Guardian
Mon 29 Dec 2025 10.00 EST
Last modified on Mon 29 Dec 2025 12.06 EST
In the Philippines, she spent three years providing end-of-life care for a family’s grandmother. When the grandmother died, family members told the healthcare worker to arrange her own way to the United States, where they operated home healthcare facilities. In California, they promised, she would have a place to stay and a stable job. They would look after her just as she had cared for their grandmother.
In 2018, the caregiver – who asked to be identified as Bella – arrived in Los Angeles on a tourist visa. She imagined herself working in healthcare facilities tucked in verdant hills or in beach communities. Instead, Bella, 57, said she landed in a shadow network of home healthcare jobs. She was shuttled among multiple facilities to avoid compliance checks and paid a fraction of a living wage. One job lasted eight months, she said, and paid $30 a day for 24-hour patient care.
“I’m thinking: ‘How could I live with that situation?’” said Bella. In Filipino culture, the concept of utang na loob, or a deep-seated sense of obligation to repay kindness, kept Bella tied to the family that she said ultimately exploited her labor and left her undocumented in the US. To break free, Bella lived in a church for months.
Many in the same situation fall deeper into the cracks of a system ripe for abuse, but Bella eventually joined a workers’ rights group that provided immigration and social services. She now earns just enough as a part-time independent home caregiver to pay taxes and rent a small room with a one-window view. That fragile sense of stability has been shaken by news of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arresting people who look like her at workplaces and at immigration check-in appointments.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/29/filipino-healthcare-workers-immigration-trump
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