Before contacting the Long Beach-based Filipino Migrant Center in 2014, Filipino immigrant Lester Ramos didn’t realize that, at the time, he was a victim of human trafficking.
“I didn’t know about human trafficking, about wage theft and everything,” Ramos said. “I just really believed whatever my boss told me—I don’t have rights to complain because I’m undocumented.”
According to an interview on the podcast Making Contact, wanting to provide for his wife and children, Ramos applied to work in the United States in 2009.
“I came here to the U.S. to seek a better life because there’s no opportunities in the Philippines,” Ramos told the crowd at a May Day protest in Long Beach on May 1.
After applying to a job advertisement, a predatory agency brought him to the U.S. and forced him to work at a Wendy’s in a small town in Alabama while stealing his wages.
In the same interview, Ramos said he was put to work for 12 to 14 hours a day at Wendy’s and was only paid for five hours. He only made around $450 a month, $300 of which would be taken by the agency trafficking him.
When he said he wanted to look for another job, his traffickers threatened to have him deported and said they would look for him wherever he went in the U.S.
After escaping his first traffickers and finding a job as a caregiver, Ramos was victimized again. He said in the podcast that his new boss convinced him he had no rights because he was undocumented, and forced him to work nearly 24-hour shifts six days a week.
According to Romeo Hebron, executive director of the Filipino Migrant Center, Ramos’ story is an all-too common one.
“Oftentimes that’s the case with trafficking survivors, they don’t know that they’re being trafficked,” Hebron said.
According to the California Department of Justice, the United States is considered a destination country for human trafficking. It is estimated that between 14,500 to 17,500 people are trafficked into the country each year. In California in 2018, 1,656 cases of human trafficking were reported—151 involved labor trafficking and 110 involved both labor and sex trafficking.
According to Hebron, Filipino victims of labor trafficking are often forced to work as caregivers, as was the case for Ramos.
“Their employers take their passports or their social security card or different documents and they hold it hostage,” Hebron said. “And then they use that and they even threaten their families back home in the Philippines as a way to say like, ‘Hey, you have to continue working in these slave-like conditions.’”
Ramos told the Signal Tribune that he felt because he was undocumented, he had no right to complain about his working conditions, and he couldn’t go home due to looming debts he needed to pay back in the Philippines. He had borrowed $6,000 total from family, friends and a loan company to afford to come to the U.S., and had no way of paying any of them back if he returned.
Things began to change for Ramos in 2014, when one of his coworkers told him about the Filipino Migrant Center (FMC).
“One of my coworkers visited FMC and he told me that maybe FMC can help me,” Ramos told the crowd.
According to the Filipino Migrant Center’s website, the organization has helped over 50 Filipino migrant workers escape human trafficking.
After helping him escape his traffickers, the Filipino Migrant Center also assisted Ramos in getting his papers in order, and in 2016 Ramos was able to make his first trip back to the Philippines to visit his family.
In 2015, Ramos became a founding member of Migrante’s (an organization that assists Filipino workers) first Southern California chapter and now works with the FMC as a worker organizer.
“I help FMC reach out to more workers and I learned the different stories of workers much worse than my story, much worse than my experience,” Ramos told the crowd at the protest.
In the past there have been multiple cases of traffickers exploiting Filipino immigrants within Long Beach, a city with an estimated 13,574 Philippines-born residents, according to census data.
In November 2013, Angela Guanzon testified before Congress’ Committee on Foreign Affairs about her experience being forced to work at a nursing facility, where she received no days off and was forced to sleep on the floor.
She said her traffickers would threaten to call the police on her and other victims and falsely accuse them of theft to have them deported if they ever tried to escape.
A neighbor noticed that Guanzon and another victim never received days off, and notified authorities. After an investigation by the FBI, Guanzon was freed and her trafficker received a five-year prison sentence.
In 2016, married couple Anita and Goncalo Moitinho de Almeida were ordered to pay $15.2 million to their victims after being found guilty of human trafficking and labor violations, which included forcing Filipino immigrants to clean and paint a Long Beach apartment building, as reported by LAist.
The Filipino Migrant Center helped the victims in this case create a campaign that exposed the crimes of their traffickers, who had been threatening the victims as well as their families back in the Phillippines.
“The sad thing is that sometimes it’s other Filipinos exploiting other Filipinos,” Hebron said. “So naturally we understand why workers would be a little bit skeptical or it would take a long time to build trust with them. We’re in it for the long haul to really build that trust and that deep relationship with workers.”
According to Polaris Project, a nonprofit organization that combats human trafficking, signs of potential labor trafficking the public should be aware of include the following:
- Workers feeling pressured by their employer to stay in a job or situation they want to leave
- Workers owing money to an employer or recruiter and/or not being paid what they were promised or are owed
- Workers having their passport or other identity documents taken from them
- Workers living and working in isolated conditions, largely cut off from interaction with others or support systems
- Workers appearing to be monitored by someone else when talking or interacting with others
- Workers living in dangerous, overcrowded or inhumane conditions provided by an employer
- Workers being threatened by their boss with deportation or other harm
- Workers put in dangerous conditions, without proper safety gear, training, adequate breaks and other protections
Polaris Project runs a 24/7 trafficking hotline, and an analysis of 8,000 calls it received from December 2007 to December 2017 found that 100 victims were identified as Filipino.
According to the California Department of Justice, there are an estimated 16 million victims of worker exploitation across the globe.
“It’s our job, as the Filipino Migrant Center, to be able to provide that kind of education, to know the signs that let workers know they are being trafficked,” Hebron said. “Because if they know that they’re being exploited, once they find that out, then we’re able to really serve them, to help them and to develop their leadership skills to become empowered workers.”
Those who suspect someone may be a victim of human trafficking should contact law enforcement at 911.
Filipino victims of human trafficking and wage theft can reach out to the Filipino Migrant Center by calling its emergency hotline at 1-562-302-1968, its office phone at 1-562-676-4414 or by emailing info@filipinomigrantcenter.org.
