Surface and Free Kuya Raul from ICE Detention!
The Mission to End Modern Slavery joins the migrant community’s calls to surface and free Kuya Raul from ICE detention. Raul Raagas, fondly known as Kuya (“older brother”) Raul, is a Filipino migrant from Jersey City, New Jersey, who was kidnapped by ICE while he was driving to work on July 24, 2026. Since then, Kuya Raul has been detained at Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey, and is now facing the imminent possibility of being transferred to another detention center out of state.
The Trump administration's increasing immigration arrest quotas are targeting migrants who have come to the US in search of economic livelihood, often forced to leave their home countries where they faced poverty, war, and climate calamities. ICE is detaining and deporting people who support entire families in the US and in their home countries, like Kuya Raul who is his family's breadwinner. When ICE detains migrants, they rip families apart while cutting off families' lifelines, preventing people from working and earning a living, while corporate prisons earn profits off of migrants languishing in detention.
In turn, the government of the Philippines, Kuya Raul’s home country, has been slow to respond to detained Filipino migrants’ requests for help, despite its public proclamations that it will uphold human rights in the face of ICE attacks. The Philippine government treats migration like a profitable business, often touting its labor export system as a viable solution for economic development that should be replicated globally. The Philippines prides itself for supplying cheap labor to the United States and keeping its economy barely afloat with the billions of dollars of remittances migrants send home annually. But instead of directing migrants earnings to sustainable local development, the Philippine government has embroiled itself in corruption scandals. It maintains systematic underdevelopment and poverty in the country to coerce and force its population to work abroad in exploitative conditions. The Philippines ultimately refuses to advocate for migrants suffering in ICE detention because it treats its people as disposable workers.
MEMS has heard the stories of many Filipino migrants who have faced trafficking, wage theft, detention, and deportation, yet received neglectful responses and condescending ridicule from Philippine government officials when they seek assistance from them. We aim to empower migrant workers to refuse to be treated like mere commodities and to fight for dignity and freedom from exploitation!
MEMS, as part of the Tanggol Migrante Movement and Defend Migrants Alliance, commits to taking action to defend Kuya Raul until he is free! We demand ICE to surface and release Kuya Raul so that he can be reunited with his family. We stand against the Trump administration’s cruel immigration enforcement policies and demand that people be treated with dignity instead of being criminalized and dehumanized in droves. We demand that the Philippine Consulate General uphold its promises and act swiftly in accordance with its duty to protect its people to provide assistance to Kuya Raul and his family and exercise diplomatic advocacy to prevent his transfer and maltreatment by ICE.