Some 20,000 residents attended “No Dictators” protests in the islands over the weekend. Chief among their concerns were the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies and its handling of the war in Iran.
Arrests and detentions made by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers skyrocketed last year, even as a majority of Americans say ICE has gone too far in enforcing immigration laws. Several Hawaiʻi bills concerning immigration — including one that would ban local and federal law enforcement from covering their faces — are still in play this legislative session.
ICE has arrested on average more than 1,100 people nationally per day this spring, according to The New York Times. In Hawaiʻi, immigration attorneys estimate that dozens of immigrants are being held at the Honolulu Federal Detention Center. This number fluctuates as ICE sends immigrants from Hawaiʻi and the continental United States to the facility, as well as when immigrants are released or deported.
Hawaiʻi Island resident Juan José Estrada Lopez was detained by ICE agents at his green card interview. He remained in the Honolulu FDC until late January. Juan and his wife, Emily Estrada Lopez, recently gave their first extended interview to HPR.
The experience has turned the couple’s lives upside down, Emily said.
Juan first came to the U.S. in 2022 from Nicaragua and presented at the U.S.-Mexico border with an asylum claim. He found work in Hawaiʻi as a welder at a coffee farm in Kona and continued reporting to ICE agents over the next three years as his asylum case progressed.
Emily and Juan met at work and struck up a conversation off the clock. For their first date, they ordered Thai food and brought it to a beach next to Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau National Historic Site. That was February 2023 — they married just over a year later. Near the end of 2024, Juan decided to pursue a marriage-based Green Card rather than keep waiting for his asylum claim to play out.
The couple’s Green Card interview was scheduled for Aug. 13, 2025. Juan and Emily traveled to Honolulu for two back-to-back 45-minute interviews with a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer. Emily went first, then Juan.
“Everything seemed normal and we were going to be on our way home. That's what we thought,” Juan said through an interpreter.
Then, the interviewer told Juan he needed to step out of the office. In walked ICE agents who proceeded to detain Juan. Juan said he even recognized one of the officers — it was the same man Juan had been reporting to for his regular in-person check-ins over the last several years.
Juan was taken to the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu. He said he was prepared to stay there a couple of weeks while an immigration court verified details about his marriage to Emily. In reality, he remained in detention for nearly half a year.
After filing a lawsuit on Juan’s behalf in January, the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaiʻi said, “He is a hard worker, a family man, and has zero criminal history.”
Local immigration attorneys say the Trump administration has employed a new tactic during deportation proceedings: holding immigrants in detention facilities alongside people awaiting trial for federal crimes.
While detained on Oʻahu, Juan spoke with Emily daily over 15-minute phone calls and emailed constantly about his case. Back on Hawaiʻi Island, Emily said she gathered photos and affidavits to prove that their marriage was real.
Emily said she leaned on her Hawaiʻi Island family and friends throughout Juan’s detention. Still, she said, some family members voted for President Donald Trump and agreed with his administration’s policies. Emily said she knew first and foremost that her family supported her marriage, “even if this administration thinks he did something wrong and they agree with this administration.”
“It's not easy,” she said. “You know, family is always first, politics are second.”
An immigration judge ordered Juan’s release in late January. The couple reunited hours later at the Kona International Airport.
“It was a beautiful sensation of freedom, of getting to feel at home and to return to my wife's arms,” Juan said through an interpreter. “This is my safe place.”
Even so, Juan said he worries that his ordeal might not have ended for good. ICE agents had previously raided the Kona coffee farm where Juan and Emily work. Juan said he’s made sure to keep every document he’s received since entering the United States back in 2022. He urged community members to remember the human piece of the immigration picture: “At the end of the day, we’re all people with different situations,” he said through an interpreter.
“We're just looking for opportunities to better our lives, and I think this is a good place for that. We wish we could find legal ways to do things, but sometimes, that's just not possible.”
This story aired on The Conversation on March 31, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m.
