Immigration detention centers would be banned on state and county lands, and other bills in the Legislature also would ensure due process for any detainees.
The bills have drawn both condemnation and support as Senate and House members consider public testimony.
The bills are moving through the state Legislature as federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents continue to enforce President Donald Trump’s promise to sweep up illegal immigrants, many of whom have committed no violent offenses, and deport them.
During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly said unspecified numbers of illegal immigrants had committed murders and were members of violent drug cartels.
Trump also has threatened to eliminate “birthright citizenship” for American-born children of immigrants, a right that’s enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Gov. Josh Green has repeatedly told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that he will not deploy Hawaii National Guard troops to the mainland to assist in rounding up illegal immigrants, especially if it means separating them from their families.
House Bill 73 would prohibit the state Department of Land and Natural Resources and Board of Land and Natural Resources from allowing state land to be used for immigration detention facilities while also forbidding state and county agencies from “contracting with the federal government or processing any permit for this purpose.”
HB 73 unanimously passed out of the House Committee on Economic Development and Technology.
HB 438 and its Senate companion bill, Senate Bill 816, would create a “Due Process in Immigration Proceedings Program in the state Judiciary to provide legal representation to individuals in immigration-related proceedings in immigration court.”
HB 457 also would require state and local law enforcement agencies “to notify an individual of their rights when in law enforcement agency custody before any interview with United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement on certain matters regarding immigration violations.”
HB 22 would limit state and county law enforcement agencies’ ability to collaborate with the federal government for immigration purposes.
The bill received support from, among others, the office of the Kauai County Prosecuting Attorney, which wrote, “As the smallest of the State’s County law enforcement team, our Office does not have the resources to spare to enforce civil immigration detainers. In addition, we share concerns about due process violations in enforcement of these orders.”
House Bill 73, which would prohibit detention centers on state and county land, has been opposed by individuals and a group called Hawaii Island Republican Women.
The bill has been referred to the House Economic Development and Technology, Water and Land, and Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs committees. No hearings have been scheduled yet on HB 73.
Support for the ban on immigration detention facilities has come from individuals, organizations and agencies such as the state Office of Public Defender; immigration and civil rights groups; Catholic Charities Hawaii; Honolulu Council member Matt Weyer, who represents the North Shore and parts of Central Oahu; Hawaii County Council member Jennifer Kagiwada; and unions like Hawaii’s largest — the Government Employees Association — and Unite Here Local 5 that represents thousands of employees of Filipino descent working in Hawaii’s hotel, food service and health care industries.
“Many of our union members are immigrants or children of immigrants, they are the working-class families, friends and neighbors that make up the fabric of our Hawaii communities,” the union wrote in testimony supporting the House bills.
“We support HB22 as it clarifies how Hawaii will treat non-judicial warrants. … (There) are legitimate concerns about the constitutionality of civil immigration detainers, as opposed to criminal warrants issued by a judge with probable cause.”
But Jamie Detwiler, president of Hawaiian Island Republican Women, wrote in opposition to banning detention centers on state and county land:
“If the Federal government provides funding to build Federal detention facilities and procures the land lawfully, a federal detention center should be built. We need to support the efforts of our President Trump and his administration in their pursuit of making America safe again.”
Andrew Crossland wrote in his testimony in opposition, “I STRONGLY OPPOSE any Bill in which the State would attempt to defy the deportation efforts of the federal government to enforce our immigration laws. We need to take care of legal citizens and residents in Hawaii first, not illegal aliens who are criminals by definition.”
In her testimony, Sharee Orr wrote, “Illegal aliens are illegal. They did not follow immigration process therefore should not be afforded any help by the state to keep them from being returned to where they came. They eventually become burden to the taxpayer.”
Noela von Wiegandt opposed HB 73 in her written testimony because “we don’t have enough housing to house the legal citizens who live here and to house our Veterans and homeless. I do not want my tax dollars spent on any facilities to house illegals on our public land. Just deport them and they can apply the legal way to live in the United States.”
State Sen. Henry Aquino (D, Pearl City-Waipahu-West Loch) chairs the Senate Labor and Technology Committee and helped introduced SB 816, which would create the “Due Process in Immigration Proceedings Program.”
Aquino wrote in a text to the Honolulu Star- Advertiser that he introduced it “in response to growing concerns from the immigration community and civil rights groups specifically.”
“Currently there’s very few resources that help folks navigate the complex legal processes surrounding immigration-related actions,” Aquino said.
Tuia‘ana Scanlan — president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees Local 665 union, which represents entertainment workers — cited the internment of 120,000 Japanese Americans and the first generation of Japanese immigrants following the Japanese navy’s attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
In the anti-Japanese hysteria that followed, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of America’s most progressive Democratic presidents, issued an executive order requiring the U.S. military to round up and force both Japanese- and U.S.-born Japanese Americans into internment camps across the U.S. West, including a much smaller one on Oahu called Honouliuli.
Congress eventually apologized and paid surviving internees $20,000 each, for a total of $1.6 billion.
Honouliuli has since been designated a National Historic Site.
“If history teaches us anything, it is that racially motivated support for the construction of detention centers is wrong,” Scanlan wrote in support of HB 73. “We need only remind ourselves of the Japanese internment camps. … It is a slippery slope to allow for the creation of internment camps. It is a deplorable mechanism used to rob contributing members of society of their possessions and their dignity.”
