Routine agreements between federal agencies and the Hawaii Police Department were postponed over concerns about overreach in illegal immigration enforcement.
At Tuesday’s meeting of the County Council Committee on Governmental Operations and External Affairs, council members discussed a resolution that would continue operational agreements between HPD and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Specifically, those agreements involved DHS’ U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and would allow the federal agency to embed special agents within the HPD and designate certain HPD employees as task force officers.
The resolution also involved a third agreement, between HPD and the FBI’s Honolulu Safe Streets Task Force, although there was minimal discussion Tuesday about that agreement.
HPD Assistant Chief Sherry Bird said those agreements have already been in place between the two departments for several years, and that HPD is simply going through a routine “annual process of renewal.”
But council members and testifiers alike were leery about the prospect of greater federal immigration enforcement on the Big Island, in the light of the hardline anti-immigration stance adopted by the Trump administration.
Immigration attorney Rose Bautista said she has helped “thousands” of immigrants, both documented and undocumented, through the U.S. immigration process and reminded council members that many of those immigrants are their constituents.
“(They) are now prospering, (they) are contributing members of our communities,” Bautista said. “They are employees, business owners, entrepreneurs, students, parents and U.S. citizens.”
Resident Cory Harden related the story of Kailua-Kona coffee farmer Andres Magana Ortiz, who was deported in 2017, under the first Trump administration. Ortiz, she said, had lived in Hawaii for almost three decades after coming into the U.S. as a child and was trying to obtain legal citizenship before his deportation.
Despite being a well-respected member of the community, Harden said, Ortiz was separated from his wife and three children and has yet been unable to reunite with them.
Liza Ryan Gill, executive director of the Hawaii Coalition for Immigrant Rights, said that while these agreements between ICE and local police departments have been standard over the last several years, her organization has not been able to obtain a current agreement under the new Trump administration.
“This is pertinent given that (Homeland Security’s) kuleana has changed since this new administration,” Gill said. “Where they had not been involved in removal in a substantive way in the past … there are now multiple new federal agencies that have been deputized for removal work.”
Gill said that given fears about the new administration among immigrant communities, the details of the proposed county agreements should be made clear.
Bird said HPD “does not practice biased policing,” and that as a local police department with limited resources, it often partners with federal agencies to access additional support.
But some council members were hesitant to approve the new agreements without a deeper dissection of their specific wording. Kona Councilwoman Rebecca Villegas said the agreements represent an opportunity “for someone with nefarious intentions” to wield HPD against Big Island immigrants.
Villegas recommended that the county Corporation Counsel revise the agreements to make clear precisely where Homeland Security’s authority begins and ends.
Puna Councilwoman Ashley Kierkiewicz agreed, saying that there is still time for the council to take a closer look at the agreements’ specific language to assuage community concerns.
Ultimately, the committee voted to postpone the matter until a future meeting on March 18.
Email Michael Brestovansky at mbrestovansky@hawaiitribune-herald.com.
