When Nicole* was in her first year of high school in the Philippines, her mother told her that it was time to pack up and go to America. 

From the beginning, Nicole knew that they were going to be TNT — “tago nang tago,” the colloquial Filipino label for undocumented immigrants which literally translates to “hiding and hiding.”

At 13, Nicole did not fully understand what that meant. She was told that they were going to live near Disneyland. She had watched movies and television shows about what it was like to live in California, but reality soon set in when they left with Nicole’s younger sister and grandfather.

Nicole grew into an adult watching her mother take on several jobs and moving around almost every year. Today, as a 24-year-old college graduate, Nicole and her family remain undocumented, unsure and hypervigilant about a second administration with president-elect Donald Trump.

Trump, a Republican who has stood on harsh immigration policies, secured his return to the White House after winning the highly anticipated US election against Vice President Kamala Harris on November 5. Questions have been raised about how the Trump administration would affect the Fil-Am community, especially his plan to mass deport undocumented immigrants.

Not knowing who to trust

Philippine authorities have thrown around different figures of undocumented Filipinos who might be affected by the mass deportation plan — from 200,000, according to Philippine ambassador to the US Jose Manuel Romualdez, to 370,000, said the Department of Migrant Workers (DMW). But it’s difficult to ascertain the number and whether Nicole’s family is among them, given their lack of documentation.

Nicole’s family left the Philippines in 2013 because her mother, who already worked overseas, could no longer afford to send her and her younger sister to school. In America, they could have quality public education, and they could also be together — even if it meant taking a risk.

Asian-American students have spoken about being bullied for looking different, or bringing packed lunches that smell unfamiliar to their white peers. But this wasn’t particularly Nicole’s concern, who entered the US with her family on tourist visas and stayed longer than allowed.

“Mas nakakatakot kaysa sa bullying is ‘yung kunin ka nila (The thought of [immigration enforcers] picking you up was scarier than bullying),” she told Rappler.

As she went through high school in the US, nobody knew about her status. The common notion, at least in her school, was that undocumented immigrants were mostly Latinos.

“‘Yung invisibility ng pagiging undocumented will keep you safe. Pero hindi ka makakakuha ng tulong….Kahit hindi naman ako binu-bully ng mga friends ko, nahirapan ako kasi hindi lang sa hindi nila naintindihan ‘yung anong ibig sabihin ng pagiging TNT, pero pati na ‘yung kung ano ibig sabihin ng pagiging Pilipino,” she said.

(The invisibility of being undocumented would keep you safe, but you also wouldn’t get help…. Even if my peers did not bully me, I had a hard time because they didn’t understand what it meant to be a TNT, and they didn’t know what it meant to be a Filipino.)

It was a struggle, too, for Nicole to watch her mother juggle multiple jobs. She worked as a caregiver, a waitress, and an office administrator in the various places they lived. Nicole found it difficult to form attachments with new friends for two reasons: because they would leave eventually, and because she did not know who she could trust with her status.

The first time Nicole acknowledged her status out loud and on paper was when she applied for college, because it was her shot at getting a scholarship. Around this time, too, was when the family started to think about pathways to fix their status. 

This was around the beginning of Donald Trump’s first presidency. During his first term in office, he was also vocal about restricting US borders. He enforced a controversial policy that saw migrant children stripped away from their parents.

The family’s attempt to regularize their status has not progressed, as they have neither immediate family nor an employer willing to sponsor them. Nicole also refuses to marry for a green card.

“I’m tired of being dehumanized, of having to do something like that just to be considered human here. I am refusing to marry just because of that. I want to marry for real.”

The process has stalled long enough for Trump to return to power.

Even after doing everything right

Though deportation may not be a close threat, some naturalized Filipino-Americans still worry about discrimination against immigrants. Jona Hilario, a community organizer in Ohio, was almost not allowed to vote.

In June, Hilario received a letter from Republican Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose saying that she could face a potential felony charge if she voted because documents at the state’s motor vehicle department indicated that she was not a citizen.

Hilario had immigrated to the US from the Philippines two decades ago, building a family and career in the US. She was naturalized in 2022, but she had not renewed her driver’s license since 2021. She then had to submit proof of her citizenship to remain eligible to vote.

“I knew that the Ohio Secretary of State… has been doing all sorts of different things to disenfranchise voters… So I was really, really annoyed and angry,” Hilario said in an At Home sa Abroad episode on Rappler.

Republican leaders have raised concerns about voting by non-citizens, even if this is a rare occurrence. 

“There’s all sorts of ways that even if you’re here, if you do all the right things, you could still run into ways that this system, the government can discriminate against you,” she said.

Trump’s incoming border czar Tom Homan has said that legal immigrants are “perfectly safe” from mass deportation efforts.

Community concerns

On Monday, November 11, progressive Filipino-American groups organized a virtual debrief with their community on the elections. It was a space to process emotions and figure out ways to move forward.

In the Zoom comments, the community expressed anger, numbness, and devastation. Some who lived in red states feared a renewed wave of racism.

Data from the 2024 AAPI (Asian American, Pacific Islander) Voter Survey showed that while almost half of Filipino-American voters leaned Democrat, one in four leaned Republican. The community debrief participants said many of their close friends and family members voted for Trump, believing that he could address issues like inflation.

During the pandemic, the National Alliance for Filipino Concerns, Kabataan Alliance, Malaya Movement, Filipino Community Center, and Filipino Migrant Center, came up with an initiative called the Filipino American Agenda to conduct town halls and collate the Filipino community’s most pressing concerns. 

Among the top concerns turned out to be economic: gainful employment and higher wages, affordable housing, and inflation. Analysts have pointed to how the Harris campaign failed to convince most voters that her party had done enough for economic concerns in the current administration, or that they had clear plans to address these in a new term.

Father Primo Racimo of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente Diocese of Tampa also noted how the Democrats failed to take into consideration the religious vote. Even some of the Filipino-Americans who supported former vice president Leni Robredo in the 2022 Philippine elections turned to Trump in the US elections this year over a single issue: abortion.

Harris often highlighted women’s bodily autonomy in her campaign, while Trump has always claimed that abortion amounted to murder despite stories of the need for abortion care even for wanted pregnancies. But for conservatives, and the Roman Catholic Church to which many Filipinos belong, there are no ifs or buts.

“The churches are also recipients of money from political candidates. Let us be aware of that because it says a lot in the way how faith is used, misused, and abused,” said Racimo.

“What shall we do?…. Is the church going to be a unifying factor, or is the church going to aggravate the division?” he added.

For now, Filipino-American community leaders believe this is a time to come together, even with other immigrants and minorities.

“I’m not saying that if Harris won, our work would be easy, not at all. Our work remains the same,” said Hilario, a leader of grassroots organization OPAWL (Ohio Progressive Asian Women’s Leadership) – Building AAPI Feminist Leadership.

“I think the first thing we should do is stop blaming each other for whatever happened because we need each other to face the next four years. And I think we can’t afford to be siloed in our individual issues and our individual identities. We need to find ways to work together because our struggle is intersectional, like what impacts other communities impacts us,” she said.

In the event of return

Aside from worries over inflation and discrimination, Trump’s mass deportation plan remains among the stickiest issues for Filipinos, dominating local headlines following the results of the election. Ambassador Romualdez advised undocumented Filipinos to voluntarily go home instead of risking deportation.

For Filipino-American US immigration lawyer Jath Shao, the threat may be “overblown.” He said there were legal and logistical barriers that may prevent Trump and his administration from carrying it out.

“10,600 Filipinos have been deported between 2014 and 2024, an average of about 1,000 a year, so if that does happen, it would take 300 years to deport everyone — statistically, they’ll be dead by then,” he said in a Rappler analysis.

In any case, the DMW said it is “ready” to assist deported Filipinos, even if they reach up to 370,000. 

Nicole, meanwhile, dreams of migration being free from worry, whether in the US or back in the Philippines. While there is still family she can return to if she goes home, she does not believe the economic quality of her life will improve.

“My dream is similar to what Romualdez advised us to do — go home. But we look at it differently. I don’t want people to migrate anymore because life is hard in the Philippines…. I want to be able to go home to a Philippines that is safe, secure, and for everyone, and no longer pushes people to leave,” she said. – Rappler.com

*Nicole’s name has been changed for her family’s privacy.