Criticisms and concerns
about recent ICE arrests
I support our immigrant workers and despise U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE is the 2025 American equivalent of Hitler’s 1940’s Gestapo.
Here are some specific examples of the terror tactics ICE is using on our island:
A Honaunau teacher let me read texts sent to her by her 9-year-old student telling her about his harassment by ICE. You can detect terror in his words telling her about being accosted by ICE agents when he got off of the school bus. “Miss, they know my name. They know my dad’s name. They know I live in a blue house. What should I do?”
I spoke with an 80-year-old farmer who said ICE had been to his Ka‘u coffee farm to arrest workers. His harvesters won’t show up to work for fear of being arrested. The farmer told me he won’t be able to get even 80% of his bumper crop harvested because of ICE.
In May this year, ICE agents showed up at 6:30 a.m. at a home in the Kona Palisades looking for a specific man. He was not there, so they arrested the woman who lived there with no warrant, no due process. Her family still doesn’t know where she is.
The illegal, warrantless arrests by ICE affect all of us on this island. The workers being arrested are our neighbors, friends, store owners and workers.
We will have shortages of locally grown as well as mainland-sourced food because of ICE.
ICE publicly says it only arrests undocumented workers with criminal records, but the truth is ICE arrests any brown people they encounter, whether they are here legally or not. ICE has even arrested American citizens.
ICE uses illegal and inhumane tactics to terrify immigrants to satisfy convicted felon Donald Trump. ICE even developed a phony warrant to fool their prey.
Persons detained by ICE do not receive due process, a right given to everyone in the U.S. by the Constitution. Once arrested, friends and family of detainees cannot find out where their loved ones are being held.
Linda Morgan
Ocean View
Why it is easy to assume
Trump hates children
Never mind starving the children of Gaza, now our president also wants to poison our future generations by revoking the government’s legal authority to combat climate change by deregulating planet-warming greenhouse gases.
We can only assume he hates children!
He wants to inflict his cruel ideas on future generations as well as enjoying current suffering despite his recognition of the starving children he sees on the media.
Lois Margaret Drake
Volcano
