It’s hard to get clear data on how many people in Hawaiʻi have been impacted by President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration enforcement.
But this year, from January through the end of July, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made almost 150 administrative arrests in Hawaiʻi. The agency made 45 arrests locally in all of 2024.
That’s according to government data provided by ICE in response to information requests from the Deportation Data Project.
“We know people are being impacted now,” said Hawaiʻi House Public Safety Committee Chair Della Au Belatti.
“We saw it with the detentions of the Filipino teachers in their homes. Could we have had clearer policies? Certainly. And should we enact those policies now before an escalation of those activities start to occur? Absolutely.”
She’s referencing an incident in May when over 10 teachers on Maui were detained in their homes by ICE. Agents were looking for a man who lived on the property over a year ago.
Stories like that are why Au Belatti, other lawmakers and immigration advocates are calling for state policies to put guardrails on immigration enforcement in Hawaiʻi.
Policy recommendations
One policy would protect places like schools and hospitals from enforcement unless officials have a warrant signed by a judge, explained Hawaiʻi Coalition for Immigrant Rights Director Liza Ryan-Gill.
“There’s no way that any place in the state can keep Immigration and Customs Enforcement out of a location if they have a warrant that is signed by a judge – a judicial warrant. But oftentimes they just have administrative warrants, which are just like self-verified within their own agency that actually do not have the same power as if they were signed by a judge,” she said.
“What we've seen in other states is them working on passing legislation to say, ‘we understand that we can't stop you if you have a warrant that is signed by a judge, but if you don't have a warrant that is signed by a judge, you can't come into this hospital or school.’”
Ryan-Gill also recommended a policy that would restrict an immigration detention center from being built on state and county land, and another one that would require a person being held on a criminal charge to be told in a language that they understand that they are being asked to an interview with ICE and have the right to refuse.
Lawmakers introduced bills proposing all those policies during the last legislative session, but they did not pass.
There are new concerns as well, Ryan-Gill explained. For example, local law enforcement can sign an agreement to be deputized as ICE agents. The funding for immigration enforcement in Trump’s megabill, HR1, makes those agreements more appealing.
“Previously those programs were not reimbursed, so they were not very attractive,” she said. “But there have been more than 780 new, what are called 287(g) agreements that have been signed since January across the country. And HR1 is making it more and more attractive.”
Another policy brought up by many people would require law enforcement to show their faces and identify themselves. It’s unclear if state law applies to federal ICE officers, but Au Belatti thinks it should be codified anyway.
“We've only seen in the last three months the escalation of what appeared to be secret police roaming the streets of America,” she said.
“So we're not gonna have the data to say, are these effective or not? But we need these policies in place to then equip both the people who have to enforce these laws and then potentially defend these laws and protect our people.”
Calls for a special legislative session on immigration
Au Belatti is urging a special session to address immigration enforcement, and she isn’t the only one. Rep. Amy Perruso echoed her call.
“I hope that my colleagues are very much in the same place around this question of immigration and law enforcement and ICE,” she said. “I think that should be low-hanging fruit, like that should be stuff that we can get out of the way during a special session.”
Perruso added that the state Legislature will have many other issues on its plate when legislators reconvene in January, like addressing the Medicaid cuts that will happen in 2028 and the state’s fiscal well-being as federal funds are clawed back.
Common Cause Hawaii, a government watchdog group, has also called on the Legislature to call a special session to address immigration enforcement.
“This cannot wait until January's legislative session,” Common Cause Hawaii Director Camron Hurt said.
“Think back to what the overarching policy of the United States was, what its posture was globally and internally eight months ago. … It's better to get it done now than to wait. There will be the business of 2026 to handle in January. There's no need to carry in a 2025 issue that we know of now that we can rectify now.”
Senate and House leadership have not released any information about a special session. But it did block off several dates throughout the year if needed. One was this week. The next is at the end of September, and the third is in mid-November.
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