In January, the Philippine Department of Justice dismissed the charges of illegal recruitment filed against executives of Sentosa Recruitment Agency in the Philippines and Sentosa Care LLC in New York, saying “there was no substantive alterations in the employment contracts signed by the complainants to sustain the findings of illegal recruitment.” In February, the National Labor Relations Commission in Manila came to a similar conclusion, pointing out that the nurses failed to notify their employer when submitting resignations, something that was both a violation of their contracts as well as a violation of the Labor Code of the Philippines.

Even the decision by the Philippine Overseas Employment Agency, which originally ruled in favor of the nurses on the issue of contract substitution, reversed itself last September after finding that “what really happened, as admitted by the complainants themselves, was that they were actually transferred to other affiliated nursing facilities.”

The matter also came before the United States Department of Justice, which likewise dismissed the charges of unfair immigration-related employment practices in August of 2007. In a letter to Sentosa attorneys, special deputy counsel of the U.S. DOJ Civil Rights Division, Katherine Baldwin said, “Based on its investigation, this office has determined that there is insufficient evidence of reasonable cause to believe the injured parties were discriminated against as prohibited by 8 U.S.C. ยง1324b.”

“This string of rulings proves that our client was not engaged in any illegal practices,” said Ibaro Relaminda Jr., Senotsa’s attorney based in the Philippines. “It also proves that the nurses were lying in their statements about maltreatment.”

With the unfurling of truth in case after case, support for the nurses and their attorney, Felix Vinluan, both in the U.S. and in the Philippines, is now beginning to buckle under the weight of the facts.