On June 12, Filipino Independence Day, the hood in San Francisco’s South of Market neighborhood got a little stronger.

Rudy Corpuz, the founder of United Playaz – a violence prevention and youth development organization – along with community members and local politicians, were on hand for the opening for UP’s new building at 1044 Howard Street. United Playaz is expanding right next door to its original location. It’s a violence prevention and youth development organization.

“We’re stakeholders because we own land and property,” Corpuz said.

Corpuz grew up and still lives in San Francisco’s SOMA neighborhood.

“You got families who’ve been here since the 60s who are still here, Filipino families,” he said. “I actually live on the next alley, Minna Street.”

Near his home is the new United Playaz facility on Howard Street.

“This is our new building that’s going to be cut June 12, 2025, the same day that my mom was born, Filipino Independence Day and the day I got arrested as an adult, June 12,” Corpuz said.

Outside the building on Howard Street, a mural of faces. People, Corpuz said, that have been involved in the community, whether they have passed away from gun violence or are helping to shut down and stop gun violence.

The new UP facility will be used to help build children’s literacy and for restorative justice services.

In the alleys of SOMA, the Filipino history dates back more than 100 years when the first generation of immigrants arrived in the United States.

Carla Laurel is the executive director of West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Center, which is located a couple blocks from United Playaz.

“West Bay Filipino Multi-Service Center has been serving the community since 1968,” Laurel said. “We own in full. This is our hub. Got the blueprint from Rudy here in United Playaz. We’re in the Filipino Cultural Heritage District known as Soma Pilipinas that was named more recently because of the 120-year history of Filipinos in San Francisco.”

West Bay and United Playaz collaborate as one community, offering programs for kindergarten through eighth grade. They serve 150 to 200 children a day.

“How West Bay even started was a lot of the Filipinos that had already been born and raised here seeing recent immigrant Filipinos coming and saying, ‘How do we help too?’” Laurel said.

Corpuz said growing up in SOMA meant having to grow up fast.

“Drugs, gangs, just a lot of fast money moving around and survival,” he said.

That lifestyle sent Corpuz on a destructive path and to prison. His experiences from the past are now shaping how he’s moving his community forward. United Playaz owns both its buildings on Howard Street. Many of the people who work with United Playaz today are former felons and lifers.

At the new building, Corpuz is dedicating it to the women who work alongside him.

“The women, I believe, are like the backbone to the movement,” he said. “Women work harder than men. You guys will go harder than men, I don’t know, for some reason. And they’re the ones who make the change happen.”

Two Palestinian peace activists from the occupied West Bank were detained upon landing in the San Francisco airport Wednesday and face deportation after immigration officials unexpectedly revoked their visas.

Eid Hathaleen and Awdah Hathaleen, cousins from the Masafer Yatta village of Um Al Khair, have been unreachable for the past day, according to organizers and a local lawmaker advocating on their behalf. As of Thursday, they were believed to remain in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody at San Francisco International Airport. The United States is expected to deport them to Jordan, where their flight to U.S. departed. 

The cousins were scheduled to begin a speaking tour hosted by a California synagogue and local churches — and were visiting the U.S. with valid tourist visas, organizers said. Eid, a leader in his village, has been on several speaking tours over the past decade and has documented Israeli settler violence — including the Israeli government’s destruction of his village and his own home in July 2024. Awdah — an activist, English teacher, and journalist — has reported on past Israeli attacks on their village for +972 Magazine. 

CBP officials did not disclose the reason for the pair’s detainment and did not respond to The Intercept’s request for comment. Organizers say the men are being targeted for their pro-Palestinian advocacy. The Trump administration has imprisoned and attempted to deport activists who advocate for Palestinian human rights — including Columbia University organizers Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi and Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk — under the guise of combating antisemitism. 

“These were Palestinian activists and humanitarians who were here to bridge relations with the Jewish community,” said Ben Linder, who helped organize the tour and is co-chair of J Street Silicon Valley, a local chapter of the liberal pro-Israeli lobby. “They were being sponsored by Jewish synagogues — these are exactly the people we need in our country right now, to bridge the divide that we have happening globally. Yet our federal government is denying them a voice.”

Phil Weintraub, lead organizer with the Face to Face committee of the Kehilla Community Synagogue in Piedmont, California, which planned to host the speaking tour, went to the San Francisco airport Wednesday to pick up Eid and Awdah. After he didn’t hear from them for several hours, Weintraub alerted other organizers and attorneys. 

Their whereabouts were unknown until Bilal Mahmood, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, was notified and rushed to the airport Wednesday evening. CBP officials confirmed to him that both Eid and Awdah were in their custody.

“Once I showed up and literally banged on the doors of Border Patrol, they finally called back and and also exited their offices and informed us of what was happening,” Mahmood told The Intercept.

Mahmood has spent the past week attending protests against the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration raids across the United States. In San Francisco, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained 15 undocumented immigrants, including a toddler, who had shown up at a federal office for an ICE check-in, according to Mission Local. The day after Eid and Awdah’s detention, federal agents ejected California Sen. Alex Padilla, pinned him to the ground, and handcuffed him for asking questions at Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s press conference.

Padilla was quickly released. But the peace activists from the West Bank, far more marginalized than a U.S. senator, remained in custody and unreachable on Thursday. Mahmood said their detainment was part of President Donald Trump’s broader attack on immigrants. 

“This is everything from ICE raids to the travel ban to now leveraging the federal government’s powers to deny free speech,” he told The Intercept. 

Erin Axelman, co-director of the film “Israelism,” a documentary about young American Jews who grappled with Israel’s abuse of Palestinians, has joined other organizers in advocating for Eid and Awdah’s release. 

“This is obviously part of the pattern of incredible Palestinian peacemakers and activists being detained and deported simply for their very reasonable freedom of speech,” Axelman told The Intercept. “Any Palestinian voice is threatening to the Trump administration at this point and it seems like simply existing as a Palestinian is enough to get you detained or deported by the Trump administration.”