In federal court Wednesday morning, a number of immigrants became U.S. citizens in a naturalization ceremony. It is an event that U.S. Rep. Ed Case has been invited to attend.
Case often votes independently from members of the Hawaiʻi delegation, and he recently came under fire from fellow Democrats for voting in favor of the SAVE Act, a bill that makes sweeping reforms to voter registration.
He unexpectedly found a week to return to the islands when Republicans cancelled sessions just before passing the president's spending bill. Case called the new legislation “terrible" and "cruel.”
Case took a break from walking door to door in Kalihi to drop off our studios and lay out his stance on immigration issues. He said he was recently alerted that the Federal Detention Center near the Honolulu Airport was being eyed by the Bureau of Prisons to send immigrants rounded up by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on the continent.
Interview highlights
On what the U.S. immigration system should accomplish
U.S. REP. ED CASE: First, legal immigration is good for our country. Legal immigration is good for our state, and it is part of our American experience. It's certainly part of our experience here in Hawaiʻi, and we should strengthen and expand legal immigration. Now, some people don't think we should. I do. I think we need to expand legal immigration significantly for a lot of different reasons. ... Point two, we cannot accept this level of illegal immigration into our country, which, in the last couple of decades, under numerous presidents, numerous congressional majorities, reached terrible proportions, just way too big, because we were not enforcing our immigration laws, and we can't go on with that. Point number three, we have over 10 million estimated people that are in our country illegally today. Some have been here for decades, some have been here for months. And obviously we have to deal with illegal immigrants in our country today, and that involves some level of detention and deportation, but to pretend that we can simply round up an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants and deport them all, I think, is the wrong thing to do. [It's] unrealistic, it's kind of a blanket solution to a problem that's far more nuanced than that. And so we clearly have to confront that reality and decide, OK, for the people that are here illegally, which of those should we focus on deporting, and which of those should we try to consider whether there's another path, a path to citizenship. And then we finally, we have some very serious issues, for example, with children who came here young, and for all intents and purposes, are Americans, the deferred acceptance of, you know, DACA, the DACA children, and I believe that we should have a path to citizenship for them.
On the Federal Bureau of Prisons using the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu
CASE: Three weeks ago, I got a notice, which was a pretty innocuous notice. This is from the Bureau of Prisons, which operates the Federal Detention Center, and so my office and I were notified, "Bureau of Prisons will update its interagency agreement with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement to house detainees in additional Bureau of Prisons facilities, including Federal Detention Center, Honolulu. ICE will soon place detainees in two housing units at FTC Honolulu, one male and one female. Detainees will be housed in their own units." So that opens up a lot of questions, right? The Federal Detention Center, Honolulu, there is space available there. They don't use it. And I've talked with folks that work there, and I've talked with the people that run Federal Detention Center, Honolulu. They're not equipped, personnel-wise, safety-wise, fitting out of the cells. We're talking about basics. … They don't have the equipment to handle a huge influx of people from anywhere, and so we've reached back out to the Bureau of Prisons and said, "OK, fine, tell us the details. How many? Where are they from? When? What have you done in terms of conditions of providing for humane detention?" And I'm waiting for that answer. ... What I suspect is happening is exactly what your question is, which is that they have an overflow on the continent, and they need to detain some here.
On the state purchasing FDC Honolulu
CASE: As it turns out, the state doesn't save money by using extra space at the Federal Detention Center. Federal Detention is a very expensive place to build, very expensive place to operate. It's got tremendous operational issues that I don't think the state wants to take over, for example, the electric bill at the Federal Detention Center, just to use one example. And number two, it turns out to be quite difficult to merge a state system of detention and imprisonment and a federal system of detention and imprisonment in terms of how you operate common doors. You have different security issues, you have different personnel issues. You have different, in some cases, unions, you have different procedures. And so it's not simple to simply say, "Oh, well, let's just rent some space." No, it's not that simple. So I took it as far as I could, and after that, I think the state decided, yeah, this is just not worth pursuing any further. And of course, the state is still struggling with the basic issue of detention and imprisonment space in the state.
On the federal spending and tax bill signed by President Trump
CASE: I think there's really four big things that are wrong with the bill. The first is that it attacks a social safety net of two generations now to help people that really need help, that need help with health care. So it attacks Medicaid. We've got a lot of people in Hawai’i that are on Medicaid. Second one is food assistance, supplemental nutrition. Third one is, it blows the federal budget by up to $5 trillion, $5 trillion, and this is supposed to be the party of fiscal discipline. I mean, if you're in that party, don't talk to me about fiscal discipline anymore, because you're not the party of fiscal discipline. You just passed the biggest deficit bill in the history of our country, and you just pretended it wasn't an issue. ... And then finally, it reverses decades of progress we've made on trying to convert to a renewable energy future, so it doubles down on fossil fuels. And I think that's just a foolish thing to do in the big picture. And I'm happy I'm from a state that has really been a pioneer in this area, but it's going to make it a lot harder for us to do that. And so if you add all of those things up, I just think that those themes are not consistent with where most Americans are, regardless of what party you're in.
This story aired on The Conversation on July 9, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this interview for the web.
