Editor’s note: This is part two of a two-part series focusing on heightened immigration enforcement on Hawaii Island and its impact on immigrant communities as well as the coffee farming industry. Part one detailed those concerns, while part two focuses on the impact of revamped and reactivated federal policies giving way to further enforcement, as well as local police involvement.
KAILUA-KONA — A significant segment of Kona coffee farmers and the largely immigrant population they employ are unnerved by recent reports of increased U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity on Hawaii Island.
ICE enforcement is likely to intensify more as President Donald Trump is retooling the agency with an arsenal partially dismantled by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
That process began Jan. 25, just five days after Trump, promising to crackdown on undocumented immigrants, assumed office. He reactivated the Secure Communities program through Executive Order No. 13768. The Obama administration suspended the program Nov. 20, 2014.
Secure Communities essentially boils down to information-sharing between the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
State and local law enforcement entities already share information about arrested people with the FBI to determine criminal histories and discover outstanding arrest warrants in other jurisdictions. Secure Communities facilitates the sharing of that information with DHS to determine if those detained have legal immigration status.
Throughout its history, which began in 2008, Secure Communities identified and led to more than 308,000 “criminal aliens” being removed from the U.S. How many noncriminal aliens were deported as a result of the program, who might have landed in the judicial system mistakenly as a result of racial profiling or for minor infractions, was not available.
Claire Hanusz, immigration attorney with Damon Key in Honolulu, explained the reasoning behind Obama’s suspension of the program.
“Secure Communities really wasn’t making communities more secure. It was making immigrant communities afraid of law enforcement,” she said. “If someone was stopped for a minor traffic violation, that should not lead to an ICE detainer that was going to put them into detention and possible deportation. The resumption of Secured Communities … is going to end up touching a lot more individuals.”
Hanusz added the result of the program’s resurrection will ramp up the deportation machine and is potentially devastating for immigrant communities because it will separate parents and children. That outcome, she said, can turn a self-sufficient family into one reliant on government assistance to survive, particularly if the primary wage earner leaves behind family members with legal status.
An accompanying directive outlining ICE policy and procedure for the issuance of immigration detainers is set to take effect April 2. Detainers — requests made of local jurisdictions to detain those who raise immigration red flags when entered into information-sharing databases — are a central component of Secure Communities.
If jurisdictions choose to honor such requests, the detainers allow for the person in question to be detained by police for up to 48 hours after they normally would be released on bond or because no criminal charge could be established. The extended detention period affords time for ICE to initiate a transfer of custody with possible deportation proceedings to follow.
A U.S. District Court in Illinois in 2016 ruled that detainers are illegal because they exceed governmental authority to detain individuals without a warrant. In 2014, a county in Oregon was held liable for damages by a U.S. District Court for denying bail to a woman being detained on a detainer.
“It’s not settled at all as to whether these detainers are constitutional, which is why they’re controversial,” Hanusz said.
Local jurisdictions in 43 states balked at requests to honor detainers in the past, according to The Pew Charitable Trusts. Only seven states in the country have honored every detainer request made to their jurisdictions.
Hawaii is one of those states.
Suzanne Shriner, president of the Kona Coffee Farmers Association, said that she and other members are disappointed that local police assist ICE in their endeavors because they don’t think immigration enforcement falls under HPD’s jurisdiction — particularly if actions involve the execution of federally issued administrative warrants, which are different from criminal warrants.
Maj. Robert Wagner with the HPD explained the department’s involvement with immigration enforcement.
“We assist them as far as locating wanted individuals by a federal agency. That does happen, not that often, but those (instances) almost always involve arrest warrants or a federal search warrant,” he said. “I know of no manpower being used by the HPD to enforce immigration laws because, basically, we don’t enforce immigration laws. The most we will do is attempt to deport someone by contacting ICE when a person commits a serious crime.”
One reason several jurisdictions outside Hawaii declined to honor ICE detainer requests, Hanusz said, is because they think doing so causes more harm than good to their attempts to police immigrant communities.
Angela Dean — president of Comunidad Latina De Hawaii, a nonprofit that works with immigrant and farm worker communities — seconded that notion.
“If police are escorting ICE agents to homes to look for individuals, they need to realize when they do that it’s really causing our community to distrust the police,” Dean said. “Domestic violence within our culture and community is something you don’t really talk about. When they come forward and talk to police, that is huge for them. This undermines that.”
Hanusz said the implementation of Secure Communities and the new detainer directive should be mitigated somewhat by the fact that the vast majority of immigrants in Hawaii, undocumented or otherwise, are not criminals.
But with the shift under the Trump administration to removing any undocumented immigrant who finds his or her way into the system instead of prioritizing serious criminals as Obama did, unrest among Hawaii Island’s immigrant communities and the industries they support, such as coffee farming, could intensify.
There is no public defender system in immigration court, Hanusz said. So while everyone is afforded an opportunity to make their case in front of a judge, those who can speak English and those who can afford attorneys “often do much better than those who do not.”
Karina, an undocumented coffee worker in Kona for the past two years who relies on her job to support her family, said she lives with fear every day.
“I’ve always felt that as long as I don’t break the law, I will be fine,” she said through a translator. “I am fearful that because I don’t speak English. If I were ever detained, I wouldn’t be able to communicate or defend myself.”
Email Max Dible at mdible@westhawaiitoday.com.
