About 35 people gathered outside the Carnival Cruise Line terminal in Baltimore today following a report that on September 7 four hospitality workers were forcibly removed from a Carnival Cruise ship docked there.

The crew members were detained and deported by federal agents without due process, according to a series of speakers. It was unclear whether the agents represented U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“My call is that their due process be upheld and respected,” former Filipino seafarer Philip Coronado said, addressing the crowd assembled at 2001 East McComas Street.

“And if they’re proven not guilty, they need assistance, and we need to approach organizations and agencies that will provide it,” Coronado said to applause.

The rally and press conference took place outside the terminal, sandwiched between the auto traffic on McComas and a steady stream of vehicles carrying cruise-bound vacationers.

Speakers protested what they said was the failure of Carnival Cruise officials to protect the workers, and also the silence from the Philippine ambassador to the U.S. and the government of the Philippines.

“This was really a heinous act,” said Mark Rodrigo, education officer for the Malaya Movement Baltimore, part of the Tanggol Migrante movement, one of the organizers of the action.

A national alliance formed earlier this year to fight for vulnerable Filipino migrant workers, Tanggol Migrante has called on the Philippine president to address the trauma faced by migrants and to secure commitments from Washington against deporting Filipinos to third countries.

Migrants, and particularly Filipino migrants, are facing immigration attacks and workplace harassment and exploitation, Rodrigo said, speaking afterwards to The Brew.

“We call on the Philippine government to act. It’s really their responsibility to do more,” he said. “We understand the the root causes here are the dire economic circumstances and lack of a true democracy at home that force people to have to go abroad for months at a time and face these hardships.

Organizers of today’s action called it part of the targeting and harassment that ICE and CBP has used to deport more than 100 Filipinos from US seaports over the last year.

In August, ICE reportedly removed 28 Filipino workers from a Carnival cruise ship in Norfolk, Virginia.

Interrogated for Hours

ICE has not responded to The Brew’s request for comment. Carnival released the following statement:

“This is a law enforcement matter of which we always cooperate, and we defer to the authorities for further comment,” said Matt Lupoli, senior manager of public relations, in an email.

Peralta and Rodrigo said the hastily organized action came in response to a report in the publication Marino PH that provided the account of a galley steward on the Carnival Pride. The steward described being awakened early in his cabin by U.S. authorities while the ship was docked in Baltimore.

The publication cruisemapper.com picked up the story, describing it this way:

“Although he denied any wrongdoing, he was handcuffed, searched and removed from the ship along with three other Filipino crew members. They were said to have been interrogated for several hours, accused of involvement in child pornography, which he denied.”

The steward reportedly said the crew members were taken under guard to the airport, fingerprinted and photographed, held in detention cells, then flown to Manila via Doha, Qatar.

As part of the Trump administration’s widening immigration enforcement, Filipino seafarers are reporting dozens of have been expelled from the U.S. over unproven child porn claims, according to the South China Post.

According to Rodrigo, the images used to accuse the cruise workers detained in Baltimore were simply family photos of their own children.