For Hawai‘i Island resident Victoria Magaña Ledesma, President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown is a repeat of what happened in 2017. Her father, a prominent Big Island coffee farmer, was deported back to Mexico.
She was 20 years old at the time, and had to take on the responsibility of caring for the farm and her younger siblings.
“It’s hard for me to explain how painful that is,” she said. “It’s heartbreaking for me, especially to know that my siblings were unable to have their father with them. They were 12 and 14 when my father was deported.”
On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to ramp up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and even to end birthright citizenship. Since he took office on Jan. 20, there have been major raids in cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and even Hawai‘i.
More recently, the Los Angeles Bureau of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency posted pictures on its social media of its agents assisting Honolulu officers with immigration. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to HPR’s request for comment on how many undocumented immigrants were arrested in the state.
Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric prompted Hawai‘i advocates, immigrants and lawmakers to determine a best course of action, including workshops and legislative measures.
Sandy Ma, a community and policy advocate for the Hawaiʻi Legal Clinic, said her office offers resources like “Know Your Rights” events.
“We will go to you and do some educational events at your place,” she said.
Ma also said people can call the office for legal advice, questions on deportation proceedings and more.
Nearly 18% of people in Hawaiʻi are foreign-born, with people mostly migrating from the Philippines, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In addition, there are more than 50,000 undocumented immigrants in the state, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
While a federal judge temporarily halted Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, Hawaiʻi Legal Clinic attorney Neribel Chardon said that people born on U.S. soil should get a physical copy of their birth certificate.
“There are organizations that are going to take care of that,” she said. “But if you are out of status, you don’t have U.S. documents, being that you are not a U.S. citizen, or your child is born here, please get a birth certificate as soon as you can.”
Trump’s slew of executive orders on immigration includes suspending the Refugee Admission Program and rescinding the Biden order for asylum seekers.
“I don't think any of us in the years of advocacy we have done, even under the first Trump administration, have ever experienced such an avalanche of policy changes all at one time,” said Liza Ryan Gill, executive director of the Hawaiʻi Coalition for Immigrant Rights.
She said the state still has rights when it comes to immigrants.
There are currently bills at the state Legislature that would aid immigrants in Hawai’i.
One bill would prohibit state lands from being used for immigration detention centers. Another would fund a program to give immigrants access to an attorney.
A third measure would require law enforcement to notify a person in custody of their rights in their native language before immigration agents interview them. The measures have passed their first committees.
“We are human”
Trump’s anti-immigration policies have rattled the immigrant communities statewide.
Community health worker Graciela Del Rio said families have been fearful and hesitant to attend their medical appointments, go to church, take their children to school or show up to work.
“This whole thing of Trump also authorizing ICE to target schools and places of worship has only heightened this fear, and we truly believe that no one should have to choose between their safety, accessing education or practicing their faith,” she said.
Immigrants have long faced discrimination in the U.S., including in Hawaiʻi, dating back to the sugarcane plantation era.
Del Rio said the community has been trying to debunk myths and stereotypes of immigrants.
“These harmful myths are there for a reason in a way to create more of this tension and division amongst communities,” she said. “They put the blame on the undocumented community. They make it seem like being undocumented is a privilege and that undocumented people don’t pay taxes and they drain these systems.”
“But those things are simply not true,” she continued.
Undocumented immigrants in Hawaiʻi pay a larger share of their income in taxes compared to the top 1% of taxpayers in the state, according to Hawaiʻi Appleseed
The U.S. has a 10-step process to becoming a citizen, although that process varies by country of origin.
Magaña Ledesma, who is of Mexican descent and part of Aloha Latinos, said that Mexico and the U.S. have not had immigration reform since 1986.
“That’s about 50 years without any form of legal pathway for immigrants from Mexico to get legalized,” she said. “It’s important to acknowledge that the U.S. benefits from this immigration and turns a blind eye to it.
“Then when it becomes politically convenient, then they vilify these marginalized communities,” she continued. “But when people say, ‘Come here the legal way,’ we should be holding our administration accountable to creating that legal pathway.”
Magaña Ledesma is now 28 and dreams of the day her father will return home.
When her father was deported in 2017, he had to wait 10 years in order to apply for a U.S. visa again. But Magaña Ledesma said the process is complicated and has been postponed two more years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It really pains me to have to humanize my father to the community,” she said. “We're trying to prove that we’re human and that we deserve rights and we deserve to be treated with dignity, and it’s honestly humiliating to be pointed out as a criminal and to be separated from your family.”
Magaña Ledesma visits her father once or twice a year. Within eight years, she finished college and has been caring for her father’s farm.
“I’d just be so happy that he would be able to see that his home and his business are still standing,” she said. “He loved his workplace so much, and that was his happy place.”