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Two Americans were killed in the Philippines during a military engagement that the government said involved communist-linked groups.
Lyle Prijoles, 40, and transgender woman Kai Dana-Rene Sorem, 26, were among 19 people killed last month in a firefight between the Philippine Army and suspected communists.
The US-born Filipino Americans are now at the center of the controversy, with critics saying the two were active soldiers of the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), designated a foreign terrorist organization by the US State Department. Human rights groups and the NPA reportedly maintained that the two were non-military activists who did not pose a military threat.
According to the City Journal, the two Americans first became exposed to left-wing ideologies through college-affiliated institutions that critics say helped pave the way for involvement with groups that the Philippine government has long argued functioned as fringes of the CPP.
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“This brings to two (2) the number of American citizens – Lyle Prijoles and Kai Dana-Rene Sorem – who died in the same incident, a development that highlights the increasing involvement of people from outside the Philippines in local conflicts,” said the Philippine National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
“The presence of two American deaths at the same time should prompt reflection on how engaging in other activities or networks can lead to unintended exposure to a dangerous environment.”
On April 19, Philippine troops clashed in Toboso, Negros Occidental, according to NTF-ELCAC. The agency identified 19 dead as enemy combatants during an operation aimed at ending decades of communist violence in the Philippines.
On the other hand, family members and human rights representatives have reportedly described Prijoles and Sorem as dedicated social activists. The NPA acknowledged that 10 of those killed were members of its armed rebel forces, but said the remaining victims – including several activists such as Prijoles and Sorem – did not pose a military threat, the San Francisco Standard reported.
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Members of the League of Filipino Students (LFS) from various schools and universities clashed with police in Manila on Nov. 13, 2025. (NurPhoto/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
In 2012, Prijoles, a Filipino American born and raised in San Diego, California, was involved with Anakbayan, meaning “Children of the Nation,” a prominent left-wing youth and student organization founded in the Philippines in 1998. Anakbayan-USA operates in all major US colleges and has drawn US scrutiny for its opposition to the US.
His activism is said to have started after studying at San Francisco State University around 2004, when he joined the League of Filipino Students (LFS), a left-wing political alliance based on Marxist, Leninist and Maoist ideologies, City Journal said.
After 2006, Prijoles reportedly made several trips to the Philippines organized by Bayan USA, another left-wing activist network. The Philippine government has alleged that both organizations operate as parts of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP).
Prijoles may also have harbored a grudge against the Philippine military after his friend — the godfather of her child and chairman of the US chapter of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines — survived a 2019 assassination attempt that left him paralyzed, according to City Journal.
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Philippine Navy personnel are deployed locally as members of the League of Filipino Students (LFS) march in various schools and universities towards the US Embassy in Manila on November 13, 2015. (George Calvelo/NurPhoto)
Meanwhile, Kai Dana Sorem was a Filipino American from Seattle, whose political development was initially shaped by the search for personal and cultural identity, according to the advocacy group Malaya Movement.
His early political involvement reportedly included serving as a legislative page for the Washington State Democratic Party. Sorem later deepened his activism in leftist Filipino organizations while studying at Central Washington University in 2020. He later launched the South Seattle chapter of Anakbayan, said the Malaya Movement.
In 2025, Sorem reportedly went to the Philippines on a US-based exposure tour, and by 2026, he had moved nationally full-time to work as an editor.
