Lyle Prijoles, a 40-year-old Hayward resident, was one of 19 people killed in an April military operation in the central Philippines — and three months later, a bloc of 11 members of Congress, including Sen. Adam Schiff, is pressing Manila for an independent investigation the victims' families say the Philippine government cannot be trusted to run itself.

The killings near Toboso, on the island of Negros, have become a Bay Area story as much as an international one: a slain East Bay man, a diaspora that has watched this happen before, and a labor movement already at a picket line in Crockett tied to the same sugar fields where the violence unfolded. As the Philippine armed forces defend the raid as a "legitimate military operation" against communist insurgents, Filipino American families and organizers here are trying to force the case into public view before it disappears.

Lyle Prijoles was 40 and lived in Hayward when he was killed in an April operation by the Armed Forces of the Philippines, one of 19 people who died near the town of Toboso on the island of Negros, according to reporting by KQED. Another American, 26-year-old Kai Sorem of Seattle, was killed in the same operation.

On July 21, U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Seattle) and 10 other members of Congress sent a letter to Philippine Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez demanding an "independent, impartial, and credible" inquiry, KQED reported. Among the signatories were Sen. Adam Schiff of California, along with Sens. Jeff Merkley and Chris Van Hollen and eight members of the House. The letter argued that any investigation run from inside the Philippine government cannot stand on its own, citing what it called a lack of cooperation from security forces and their refusal to turn over evidence.

What happened at Toboso is contested. The Philippine government's National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict has said the 19 dead were members of the New People's Army, the armed wing of the country's communist insurgency, according to Associated Press reporting cited by KQED. Human rights groups including the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines, BAYAN USA and Malaya Movement USA describe it instead as a "massacre executed by the Armed Forces of the Philippines who conducted indiscriminate firing."

Physical evidence has been hard to come by. The Philippine Commission on Human Rights opened its own investigation on April 26, pointing to "inconsistencies in the identities of those dead" and reports that more than a hundred families were displaced, according to KQED. Dr. Raquel Fortun, a forensic pathologist who examined the bodies at relatives' request, said in early May that the remains were decomposed, misidentified, left in water and missing clothing.

Families of both Americans, joined by human rights lawyers and union members, held an online press conference last week to push the congressional letter into public view. "Our family has come to terms that we will never get the type of justice found with a jury and a judge or even jail time," Prijoles' sister, Lily, said in a statement carried by KQED. "The Philippine Army should not be shooting at civilians and hiding their mistakes."

The case carries a distinct Bay Area charge. International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10 passed a resolution condemning the army's actions in Negros — a sugar-producing region with a long history of farmworker organizing. The resolution landed as ILWU Local 6 members were on strike at the C&H Sugar refinery in Crockett, which sources cane from Negros. ILWU records confirm roughly 100 Local 6 workers walked out at the Crockett refinery on June 15 and remained in contract talks through late July, an unusually direct line connecting an East Bay labor fight to the fields at the center of the killings.

For Filipino Americans here, it is not the first such case. Prijoles met San Francisco activist Brandon Lee in an Asian American studies class in 2004; Lee was shot outside his home in the Philippines in 2019 and left paralyzed, and no one has ever been charged.

The stakes reach into U.S. policy. The Philippines is the largest recipient of American military assistance in the Indo-Pacific, taking in more than $1.14 billion in equipment, training and defense funding since 2015, according to U.S. Embassy data cited by KQED. Sorem's sibling, PJ, said the families are "fighting to end state-sanctioned violence and US military funding of the AFP" — a demand that runs straight through Congress, where the letter now sits.