A Filipina nurse working legally at a Phoenix hospital was taken into federal custody at an airport, even as a long-term Filipino permanent resident in California was removed from the country — two cases unfolding against a backdrop of stepped-up immigration enforcement nationwide.
Federal agents detained the nurse at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where she was placed under the custody of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Before the arrest, her relatives said, she held a valid work permit and was employed in an acute-care telemetry unit at a Phoenix hospital.
A GoFundMe page set up by her boyfriend states that she has no criminal history. Her family, for their part, said they remain unaware of any reason behind the detention. In a later update on that same page, her boyfriend wrote that her immigration case is set for a court hearing on September 4.
As of this writing, the Philippine Consulate General in Los Angeles has not commented on her situation.
The California case involved a Filipino who had made the US his home for over 20 years. GMA News Online reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) carried out his deportation on August 18, 2026, roughly six weeks after an immigration judge handed down a final removal order on July 2.
DHS described the man as affiliated with the Asian Boys gang and pointed to a California criminal record that carried convictions for voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault with a firearm, and possession of a controlled substance. He had first arrived in the country as a lawful permanent resident through California in April 2004.
The gravest of the charges traced back to the death of a US Navy sailor on a San Diego freeway in the early hours of October 27, 2018. The sailor, driving with his girlfriend near 2 a.m., spotted what looked like a stalled car and pulled over to lend a hand. The Filipino was inside that vehicle along with three others.
Prosecutors said the group had just come from a burglary that ended in gunfire with a homeowner, leaving their car with damaged tires and stranded on the freeway. One of the men, they said, wrongly assumed the sailor was the homeowner from the earlier clash. The sailor was shot in the chest as he walked up to the car, and though he was taken to a hospital, he did not survive.
Authorities took the Filipino into custody about a week later. He entered a guilty plea to voluntary manslaughter and additional charges tied to the sailor’s death, and in 2020 drew a sentence of nine years and eight months in a California state prison. The individual who fired the fatal shot was found guilty of first-degree murder and given life without the possibility of parole.
