Four additional Filipino crew members, this time from the Carnival Pride, were detained and deported while in the Port of Baltimore, on September 7th, 2025, according to an account in the popular CruiseMapper. This brings the total number of Filipinos recently deported to well over 100.

A Filipino galley steward, who worked aboard a Carnival cruise ship, outlined the sequence of these disturbing events.

He reports that in the early morning, U.S. authorities entered his cabin, conducted a search, and instructed him to pack his belongings. Although he denied any and all wrongdoing, he was handcuffed, searched, and removed from the ship along with three other Filipino crew members.

They were interrogated for several hours, and accused of involvement in child pornography, which they denied. The crew were then taken under guard to the airport, having been fingerprinted and photographed. They were held in detention cells before being flown back to Manila via Doha, Qatar.

This story is similar to dozens of other crew members who have been deported. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revoke crew members ten-year C1/D seaman visas based on allegations that they viewed child pornography while on the cruise ships. CBP officers then refuse to permit the crew members the right to speak with an attorney, to review the evidence which allegedly incriminates them, or otherwise confront their accusers.

This is abusive, unconstitutional, and flat-out wrong. In my early years as a crew member advocate, I represented many hundreds of Filipinos working on cruise ships. My impression is that Filipinos are among the hardest and most disciplined workers on the high seas. Accusing them of a crime as heinous as consuming child pornography with no evidence and no due process is abhorrent.

This Week in Asia interviewed several deported crew members that highlighted the injustice happening. A Carnival Cruise Line cook, Marcelo Morales, explained that he was “barred from legal access and officials did not give them a proper explanation of their alleged offenses. They also asked the workers to sign papers before placing a pair of handcuffs next to the documents.”

He continued, “I asked if we could contact the Philippine embassy in New York and they just laughed at us. They did not give us the opportunity to defend ourselves.” Morales completed the paperwork to avoid prison time despite not fully understanding its contents. He accused the agents of treating the deportees like criminals, saying food or water was not offered to them while waiting for their flight to the Philippines.

Crew members who turn to U.S. courts for help will have a hard time getting their cases reviewed, according to Travel Weekly who interviewed several legal experts including Georgetown Law faculty member Sophia Genovese. She told Travel Weekly that foreign crew members with revoked visas based on alleged criminal activity without pending charges or investigations are not subject to review in federal courts. Genovese also stated her suspicions on the allegations against the crew members saying “authorities do not appear to be investigating the allegations or identifying potential victims, the standard approach for such cases.”

“I think that invoking something so abhorrent, like child pornography and child sex crimes, may be cover for the department to avoid scrutiny over the situation, to try and manipulate the situation so there isn’t much pushback,” Genovese said. 

I readily agree.

If 100 crew members owned or consumed child pornography I would expect and hope for more than just deportations. They should be prosecuted just like Carnival employee Reza Heta Pratama who was recently sentenced to four years for child exploitation materials. Given how few arrests have been made leads me to believe the charges against the Filipino crew members are mostly bogus.

Several publications explain that the Trump administration’s widening immigration enforcement in the United States has led to mass deportations of Filipino seafarers over unproven child pornography accusations.

Unsurprisingly Carnival Cruise Line has remained silent after requests by advocates to support Filipino crew members amid the ongoing deportations, saying that this is only a “law enforcement” matter. Carnival ignores the fact that in the vast majority of cases there is no evidence presented or charges against its employees. The Cruise Line International Association (CLIA), has also played dumb and has shied away from taking reasonable steps to protect the rights of hard working crew members.

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Photo credit: Screencap from wavy.com video; Carnival Pride – HenSti – Own work, CC0, commons / wikimedia.