HPR has been learning about immigration enforcement actions across the state, including updates on an immigration raid on Kauaʻi last year that led to 44 arrests.
The Conversation spoke with longtime Maui immigration attorney Kevin Block. He says that enforcement activity on the island has changed dramatically, and that his clients are skipping medical appointments and reducing their inter-island travel out of fear.
Interview Highlights
On handling immigration cases
KEVIN BLOCK: One thing is that now we have a bunch of new laws and cases that allow for a person to be held in custody while their application or their court case proceeds, and that's a problem because the immigration violations are civil. There's no other area in the law where we imprison people who are being charged with something civilly. But now, under the current interpretations of INA § 235 and under these couple of these new cases, if a person is in proceedings trying to apply for asylum or has entered without an inspection, even if it was 20 years ago, and has been living here this entire time, they may show up for an appointment at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or Immigration and Customs Enforcement and be taken into custody. And then they're told, 'Hey, if you want to continue to fight your case, you're welcome to do that, but you're going to be sitting here in the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu by the airport' — who knows how long? If you lose your case in immigration court and you file an appeal, that can take a year or more. And so what it does is it encourages, or it sort of incentivizes, people to not really exercise their full due process rights.
On treatment during federal raids
BLOCK: It is not necessary to kick down doors with machine guns out and your face covered in a mask. … The idea of treating them all like criminals, and the idea that it's necessary to have this aggressive, militarized approach to the enforcement, that's the other big difference. Now there may be an equal number of deportations under other administrations, but the difference is the fear that this causes because of how it's being conducted, and it also, just the sort of collective subconscious effect that it has on a large group of people that are our community members and our neighbors when they're constantly the subject.
On the effect of immigration raids on community
BLOCK: When guys come from a different island and they start plucking people out of your community, it feels weird, it feels like a war. It feels dangerous and cruel. And then what happens, too, is people won't send their kids to school, they won't go to the hospital if they're sick. They won't go to work if they need to go to work. And that whole failure to participate in civic life really affects the entire community, right? ... So there's a ripple effect, like we found out during the fire that what happens to part of our community really happens to all of us. I mean, I know that sounds cliché, but we learned that the whole island was impacted by the fire, whether we were next to it or not. And I think that's kind of what we're feeling about the enforcement activity, that you can feel the way that it, anytime that something creates so much fear and sadness and despair in a part of the community, the rest of the community feels it.
On community response and Roots Reborn
BLOCK: So right after the fire, I reached out to these young folks that I knew because I did their DACA applications, and I'm like, ‘Hey, FEMA is coming over in there, they have these lists of people that are missing.’ And they're like, ‘No, we already have our own list, and it's way more accurate because we're from the neighborhood, right?’ So that's when we realized that in disaster recovery, just like in response to a hostile enforcement framework, the folks that are from the neighborhood are the ones that have the sort of, the dog in the fight, and they're the ones that know the relevant, important information. They know how to talk to their neighbors about what's going on. So that's how Roots Reborn started.
Roots Reborn is a justice and disaster response organization that formed in response to the Maui wildfires and immigration enforcement activity. More information about Roots Reborn can be found on their website.
This story aired on The Conversation on March 9, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Jinwook Lee adapted this story for the web.
