It wasn't that long ago that Hawaiʻi filed suit over a Muslim travel ban instituted by President Donald Trump during his first administration. Former state Attorney General Douglas Chin led the fight challenging the ban.
Speaking to The Conversation, Chin reflected on that pivotal time and shared his take on some of the legal challenges presented by the first 100 days of Trump’s second administration.
"There was this sense of, 'Hey, if the government is going to start attacking one group because of their religion or because of their ethnicity, then what's going to stop them from coming after other groups?'" Chin said.
"This kind of reminds a lot of us of what our parents or our grandparents faced if they were of Japanese descent when there were internment camps that happened during World War II," Chin added. "So it really did strike a nerve."
With a more conservative U.S. Supreme Court now compared to during the first Trump administration, Chin said it remains to be seen how all the current lawsuits will play out.
"It's not like these are just political moves that are being made in order to stop whatever the opposing party is doing. It's lawyers who are saying, 'Look, this is what our constitution says. This is what our law says,'" Chin told HPR.
HPR also heard from Hashim Usman, the imam of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community of Hawaiʻi, about what he's feeling at the moment.
"Within our community as well, of course, there are people who are legal and who, at times, who are refugees, who have escaped violence, who have escaped religious persecution, and they have come into United States seeking that religious freedom and seeking that protection and a peaceful life," Usman said.
"They are worried, of course, that something could be done, you know, to come after them and to force them to leave the country and go back to wherever they were, where they were being persecuted or facing religious persecution."
This interview aired on The Conversation on Feb. 24, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m.
