The Reception and Study Center for Children of the Department of Social Welfare and Development took custody of a young Filipino boy on Sunday morning, hours after he stepped off an international flight in Pasay City. His placement with the center marked the end of a nearly two-year stay in Jordan.
The child reached NAIA Terminal 3 on July 6, 2026 aboard Qatar Airways Flight QR934. Two officials had accompanied him for the trip out of Amman: Mohamad K. Ismail, a case officer with the Migrant Workers Office, and Charisse Malaban, an Assistance-to-Nationals officer at the Philippine Embassy in Jordan. They saw the transfer to the DSWD facility completed once the group cleared the airport.
Since August 2024, the boy had lived at the Al Hussein Social Foundation, an institution in Jordan that cares for orphaned and abandoned children.
The push to bring him home gathered momentum during a visit the following year. Migrant Workers Secretary Hans Leo J. Cacdac traveled to the foundation in August 2025 alongside Undersecretary Jainal T. Rasul, and it was there that the two officials were briefed on the child’s case. Cacdac afterward instructed the legal retainers working with the Assistance-to-Nationals team of the Migrant Workers Office in Jordan to pursue every available avenue to secure the boy’s safe return.
