House Standing Committee on Public Safety

Good morning. Today is Monday, November 10th, 2025. This is the Committee on Public Safety, 10:15 AM in Conference Room 325 at the State Capitol.

I want to welcome our presenters and my colleagues here today at the Public Safety Committee, as well as participants who are here in the room and audience members who are watching via the House YouTube channel.

The purpose of this informational briefing is to provide an update on findings from the Deportation Data Project and policy recommendations in light of changing federal executive orders, policies, and enforcement actions. Today, we have representatives from the ACLU of Hawaii and the Hawaii Office of the Public Defender. I will introduce them as—as we begin.

However, I'd just like to say a couple of things by way of context. The purpose, as I've said, is to get input and updates on the findings from the Deportation Data Project.

But what I wanted to share with Committee Members and with our presenters was yesterday I was part of being able to watch a presentation of the live performance of Defining Courage by the Japanese American National Museum, and it was a—it was a tremendous performance.

It was telling the story, a story that needs to be told, of our country's history during World War II and what happened with Japanese Americans. And I think that moment in time, we hear echoes of that moment in time today.

So, what I hope that we can do today is, is understand how Executive orders, policies, enforcement actions are being now taken across the nation.

When we were first looking at some of the proposals and policies that we're going to be talking about today, when we were first looking at these things in January of this year, it was a very, very different context.

And today, what we are seeing across the nation, and even here in our own islands, is increased enforcement without what I believe is the due process rights that are afforded to all Americans and residents under both our United States Constitution and our Hawaii State Constitution.

We have seen raids as recently as a week ago on Kauai, where 44 people were picked up. And I understand the Federal Government has made it a part of their press releases that there are some individuals who are connected to terrorism, but what about those others?

And even those who are connected with terrorism are afforded due process under our constitutions. We've seen teachers, who we desperately need here, teachers of Filipino national—Filipino nationals—who are being kept in their homes under fear. We are seeing Kona farms being raided, and not all of these things are being reported.

But I think this is an opportunity for us to shed light on the data that's being collected and also to understand anecdotally, because that's what we might be left with, is anecdotes, to understand what's happening in our community so that this side of the table, the Legislature, can begin to enact policies that truly, truly protect our residents—policies that we have been considering since January.

And it may be time, in fact, to ensure that we pass some of these laws quickly because we know that there are likely due process rights that are being violated now. We see it happening on the continent and we hear and we are getting reports of it happening here.

So, on that note, Members, thank you for indulging me in this opening remarks. Our first presenter is Mandy Fernandez, Policy Director of ACLU of Hawaii. I'm going to let her introduce herself, but she's here on behalf of Salma Rizvi, Executive Director of the ACLU of Hawaii. So, Mandy, take it away.

Thank you so much, Chair and good morning. Good morning, Vice Chair Iwamoto and Representative Morikawa. Like Chair had said, my name is Mandy Fernandez. I'm the Policy Director with the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii.

We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that seeks to defend the rights and liberties that are guaranteed to us by the state and federal constitutions. Thank you so much for holding this informational briefing and bringing attention to this issue.

As Chair said, enforcement actions of the Federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, or ICE, have dramatically increased since January as compared to the years prior in and we know that because of the work of the Deportation Data Project.

Today, I'm going to go over the updated data that was recently shared by the project on the enforcement activity that we have seen in Hawaii, discuss some policy solutions that could help mitigate some of this fear that it's created, best guard our state and local resources, increase transparency in policing, and protect our communities.

We've seen immigration enforcement activity that's occurred on Kauai, Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii Island. This has caused a lot of fear and uncertainty as federal agents have erroneously raided teachers' homes, at times ignoring warrant requests, and patrolling neighborhoods of victims of the Lahaina fires. In Hawaii, we have approximately 258,829 immigrant residents, which is roughly 18% of the population.

Many people are doing the work to get status and trying to go through the legal processes and but changes at the federal level have created a shifting landscape where very quickly the rug can be pulled from out from underneath people's feet.

Research shows that when ICE is in the community, immigrants and their families and communities at large are less likely to report crime, so this truly is a public safety issue and relevant to this Committee.

We know that federally a little bit more about the landscape is that with HR 1, money of this magnitude that's being given for enforcement, immigration enforcement efforts, it's greatly expanded and the largest amount of that is going to be passed on to the private prisons.

And if we accept money here in Hawaii in the future, it's going to become, it will come with serious strings attached to it, just to be clear, and it's going to make our local and state law enforcement extensions of the federal immigration agenda. So, that's what we anticipate coming down the pipeline.

This expansion has already happened at the federal level. What we're seeing, I'm going to use ICE as a shorthand, but actually what we've seen under this Administration is that it's not just ICE. They've really been expanding it into other polling and other agencies at the federal level that were not otherwise previously involved with immigration enforcement.

So, I'm just going to be using that though broadly to refer to any federal agency that's involved in this. We know that the National Guard has been deployed so far to six cities, threatened to be deployed to six others, and there's been state National Guard activated by President Trump in 15 states.

The Deportation Data Project started up as a way to give the public information about how immigration enforcement is being rolled out under this administration. It's a centralized repository of individual level US government immigration enforcement data and it's housed at UC Berkeley Law in partnership with UCLA's Center for Immigration Law and Policy.

I've included in a packet that I've handed out the biographies of those involved that have started this up and are working on this project. So, they do this, they collect this data through Freedom of Information Act requests.

And the most recent batch that we have runs until July, late July of 2025, so that we do not have hard data since then, but that is—that's a data set that I'm going to be pulling from today. So, here are some of the—here are some of the top line statistics.

When it comes to ICE arrests, there have been 153 between January and July 2025 in Hawaii. That is up 273% from 41 during the same period in 2024. There were 58 total for the entire year in 2024. So, again, just between January and July here, it's been 153 detentions.

The average daily population of 31 in June 2024 at the Federal Detention Center to 91 in June 2025. That's a 193% jump. With ICE removals, we had 96 between January and July, compared to 15 for the same period in 2024. It's a 540% increase. The immigration court backlog.

There are 1,404 pending cases as of August 2025. That's an 18% increase since 2024 and a 351 increase from 2020. About one in five residents in Hawaii were born outside of The United States, 95,000 of whom are not yet naturalized, and of these, an estimated 30,000 without legal status.

Nearly 3/4 of all immigrants entered the US since 2009 or earlier and foreign-born residents make up about 22% of the workforce with higher shares in particular industries and occupations like hospitality and healthcare. I'm next going to be going over the detainer information.

Detainers are a request from the Federal Government to local and state law enforcement to hold somebody in criminal custody longer than they have to, so it's essentially using state resources to keep somebody locked up, even if they, they should be released. There have been 111 ICE detainers issued in Hawaii between September 2023 and July 2025.

49 or 44% of detainers were issued between January and July of this year. 47% of 2025 detainers were for individuals with pending criminal charges. 41% were for people with criminal convictions, and 12% were identified as other immigration violators, and we're not entirely sure what that means.

So, there are some holes in the data that we've seen where the agents did not completely fill it out. Almost all these were issued to state jails, sheriff departments, police departments in Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii island, and a few were issued to the Federal Detention Center and U.S. Marshals.

43% of detainers are marked as lifted as a result of individuals booked into detention. But again, there are a lot of entries where this is, this is left blank or where this was not completed. 39% of individuals booked in detention in this year were detained as a result of detainers are marked by ICE as yes, for statements made.

So, having made statements to the agents. And then, that is—so I think that's the end of the data that I pulled from the Deportation Data Project. I can pause now for any questions, or I can continue with some of the policy solutions that are being considered.

Maybe if we can, before we dip into the policies, maybe we can hear from our second presenter, Ms. Chang, as the representative of the Public Defender's Office, because I think—so, we've got the data from the data project, and maybe we need to hear what's happening because it complements the data you just described. So, Ms. Chang, if you could introduce yourself.

Thank you and good morning, Chair Belatti, Vice Chair Iwamoto, and other Committee Members. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. My name is Haley Chang. I am the Assistant Public Defender, also known as the First Deputy, for the State of Hawaii Office of the Public Defender.

Before I provide information for the Committee's consideration, I do just want to make the context of the information that we have very clear. Unlike the ACLU, our roles in our system is very specific. We represent indigent individuals in criminal proceedings. That includes pre trial, pending trial, post trial, post conviction proceedings.

But our involvement in the system, the, the, you know, judicial system, is really related to this criminal context. Myself, nor are any of my attorneys trained immigration attorneys.

So, obviously, the ACLU and others that you will hear from or may have received information from will be the experts on the nuances of the, of immigration law and how those proceedings work. But I think why I was invited to be here today was to share the impact that we have seen on our clients.

I think the shift that we've seen, really since January, and sort of how we believe it's impacting our community members and the administration of justice and in criminal proceedings. So, I just wanted to provide that framework before I dive into some of the things that we've seen.

First and foremost, earlier this year, we began to receive, and I have personally seen ICE presence at the courthouses. In the First Circuit, we have not seen ICE agents enter the courthouse, but we have seen ICE vehicles circling the courthouses and outside the courthouses.

Presumably, again, we cannot confirm what they are doing, but presumably there to either observe, possibly detain individuals who are exiting or coming to court to address whatever matters they may have.

Secondly, with increased frequency, we have just seen ICE contacts with our clients to a degree that I think is new and different than what we've experienced previously. I've been a—I've been with the Public Defender's Office for a very long time and have been practicing indigent defense since 2007.

This year would mark the first time that I've actually physically seen ICE presence at our courthouses, and I think it's responsive to what we know is going on, on the national level. We are seeing individuals who have been compliant with supervision be picked up without any new violations. We've seen individuals who have pending criminal matters be detained.

And again, I would like to say we don't know necessarily what happens, what their legal status is, if there is a valid immigration detainer or not. Again, those nuances we're not privy to.

And as I think the Committee can imagine, the agencies are not going to be forthcoming with information to the Office of the Public Defender, as these are our clients and these are the people that we represent.

But I can just speak to the increase in the presence and what we believe is enforcement in detaining individuals and entering them into deportation proceedings. I have received, you know, and again, a lot of this is anecdotal. It's our attorney sharing information, which was done to prepare for today's info briefing.

But we have several reports of clients who have been detained, what we believe detained by ICE, that's been confirmed or shared with us by family members, and we never hear or see them again. We've also seen—seen on our neighbor islands.

Our Public Defender's Office is statewide, so we have offices—two in the Third Circuit, Big Island, one on Maui, one in Kauai, and of course, here on Oahu. Just last week, we received a report of a client who had appeared for an initial appearance being detained at the Wailuku Courthouse.

As recently as I believe a couple of weeks ago at our First Circuit Courthouse, somebody came to do their proceeding in court and was told to wait for paperwork, go down and check with probation, went outside to take a break, catch some air, smoke a cigarette or something like that, and never came back.

So, there are a lot of stories like this. And again, we are not privy to the before, the lead up, or really the after because we are not their immigration attorneys.

But I can just share, again, anecdotally, that it, it's without question that our perception, at least with our contacts and our the information we receive from clients and family members, is that there has been a stark increase in the presence of ICE and ICE enforcement, which includes detention and entry into deportation proceedings. If that's helpful, yeah.

And we don't have any concrete data. We are beginning the process. This is not something we've ever felt it necessary to track and keep track of because, again, we don't involve ourselves in the immigration side. Immigration consequences have always been a very real and very large part of criminal representation.

It is our duty to advise our clients appropriately of potential immigration consequences, but the after effect of that we've never felt is not really our responsibility. We've not felt the need to track that.

But we are going to begin to keep stats on some information with the hopes of trying to provide more concrete data to those that are willing to listen to what we are observing. So, that's anecdotally what I can share what we've seen around the same time that we've been talking about since January of 2025 and it continues to be ongoing.

And the last report that I got from one of my deputies was as recently as a couple of weeks ago in Wailuku, so.

Let's open up for questions on the data and then we can start talking about policy options.

Representative Vice Chair Kim Coco, any questions?

One. To the defender. When, when someone, a client disappears, what happens then? Do they become more into, in trouble with the justice system?

Well, I think that is something that we—I cannot provide a concrete answer to that. A lot of times, we are assuming that the information about somebody, for example, an example would be if somebody's on probation, right?

Their term of probation is maybe four years for a circuit court case. If they are still on probation and they get picked up at ICE, we assume that the probation office and their probation officer has been informed of that detainer. We also know that probation does report immigration issues to ICE.

I think they are, they are mandatory reporters as to if somebody's been convicted of a crime or placed on supervision, but we haven't yet, as far as I know, and again, my office has about 100 attorneys, but I have not personally been told in seeking of the information that we've seen like a new warrant go out or a new charge be imposed as a result of a non-appearance or a failure to comply because of an ICE detainer or deportation proceedings.

For those that are in the pre-trial process, we'll see what happens. Either their cases I assume will have to be dismissed because we physically don't have the body here to avail themselves of the system, but I have not heard of increased charges or new charges resulting as, you know, resulting because of a detention proceeding.

Thank you. Representative Iwamoto.

Thank you, Chair. The Office of the Public Defender is funded through the?

State of Hawaii.

State of Hawaii. Through the Judiciary?

We are under the Department of Budget and Finance.

Oh, okay. So, understanding that—okay, that was information I needed to know. And then regarding the courthouse, are there cameras on the exterior of courthouses to like observe if people are being picked up or not necessarily?

I believe there's cameras on the exteriors of the courthouses. Again, we would not be privy to the vantage point that they have or how those are monitored, the keeping of any of those videos. But there are cameras. We we, we are aware of that. I can't speak to all of the courthouses.

There's, you know, courthouses, the district courthouses, the circuit courthouses, all of the different circuits and jurisdictions statewide, but at least for Oahu, there, there, I believe there are cameras at all of the courthouses.

Thank you. And then regarding the, the term "detainers" that both of you mentioned, are these legal judge warrant kind of thing—like, what is the legal authority of a detainer? Is it an order? Is it a request?

It's just a request. And so, when we say we had 111 detainers or requests to detain, how many of them were complied with?

I think all of those.

Oh.

Oh. Sorry. Apologies.

No, no, that's okay. So, but is there any kind of authority, code or regulations, that describe when a detainer is received, must it shall be followed? Is it all discretionary up to the recipient of the detainer request?

From what we understand, local law enforcement, when we're talking about our local agencies, Sheriff's Department, county police departments, whether it's DLNR, you know, any other law enforcement agencies are not mandated to comply with those requests. That's our understanding.

If, of course, if it's accompanied by a judicial warrant or something else that would put it solely within the purview of state or county law enforcement, that would change things.

But it's our understanding, and, you know, Mandy might be able to speak more firmly to that, but there's nothing that, I think in the US Code or at the state level that mandates law enforcement act upon it if it's just a, what we call like a civil immigration detainer.

Okay, thank you. Did you have anything more to add? And then my last question is, you made a reference to, so 18% of Hawaii's residents are maybe some form of immigrant status. Is that the approximate number? And then you also reference that there's—they don't report crimes.

So, that's suggesting that almost one fifth of our population could be subjected to targets of criminal behavior, but they wouldn't report them. So, it would possibly look like crime is going down, but that's—that—would be a false kind of conclusion because, in fact, we're removing the people who might be more targeted from reporting. It's not like our streets are safer.

Yeah, absolutely. That's completely correct, Vice Chair, and ACLU conducted a study a couple years back, and it found that when there are immigration enforcements in the streets, then immigrant communities become even more vulnerable because they are less willing to come forward and report being the victims of crime. And immigrant communities are already disproportionately victimized.

Okay, thank you. Thanks, Chair.

And if I may just add one supplemental note on that point. I think it also extends beyond reporting of crimes when you're a victim.

I think what we're seeing and the impact that we're seeing of ICE presence at the courthouse, in the parking lot of the courthouse, is also extremely scary and problematic for our clients who want to go to the courthouse to pay a traffic ticket or have an initial appearance for whether it's a serious or non-serious offense.

It, it's that fear and it's creating, I think, an unintended deterrent effect on our community's willingness. And like, I think the number is over a quarter million of our, of our community members are immigrants.

So, that's a large number of people who are, I think, going to be potentially, if they are not already, fearful of interacting or engaging with law enforcement or availing themselves of any of the judicial procedures that we have in place.

I wanted to—did you want to add anything?

I was going to, now I want to add something. I was going to add that it's not only—yeah, of course, it increases fear of just even sending your kids to school, going to the Doctor, especially changing policies around sensitive locations, and we'll talk about that in a little bit, but yeah.

Mandy, I wanted to before, again, before we go into policies, because I won't get there soon, I wanted to go into those statistics of detainers for individuals with pending criminal charges. And did you also have a statistic for those whose criminal charges have been resolved?

I have pending criminal charges and then criminal convictions.

Okay. Can you explain how that, those detainers, would play out? I'm trying to go a little bit deeper than just the statistics. And maybe Ms. Chang could actually answer this, because in the context of the jail receiving the detainer, what is this potential persons who have pending criminal charges, what are they there for?

And then what is the process that should be followed all the way through the resolution, and then after that?

When you say the process that should be followed, is that for?

For the criminal, for the criminal transaction pieces.

So, in the context of immigration or just criminal procedure generally?

Criminal procedure generally.

So, when you're charged with a crime, the Office of the Public Defender will represent you if you're indigent and everyone is entitled to legal representation. Obviously, if you can afford to hire your own attorney, you will get your own. If you are indigent, we will step in or appoint a conflict—counsel—will be appointed if our office does have a conflict with the case.

This is very generalized because there's so many different nuances of the criminal system, ranging from citation that could be used as a summons to go to court, where therefore you're not in jail, there's no bail or anything like that.

For example, if you got a driving without license citation, generally, we are not seeing people be arrested for those, but you will get a court summons and you will have to go to court to address it, and it is a crime. It's either a petty misdemeanor, misdemeanor—now we actually have a felony...wall.

And if you do not appear, then a warrant will be issued. For other more serious types of offenses, or if you have an outstanding warrant perhaps, many people are arrested and unless you can bail out or grant a release through another mechanism like supervised release, you will stay incarcerated until your case is over.

And when we say over, that has many different iterations as well. So, when I read this and I hear pending criminal charges, generally that's going to mean to me that their case has not reached a resolution yet. It's pending, meaning they're in the pretrial phase. Now, pretrial doesn't mean the case has to go to trial.

You can enter a plea agreement. You could file a pretrial motion to get the case dismissed, the client could enter a guilty plea as charged, or you could go and have a jury trial, but pending indicates that there's not been a final judgment.

That could also potentially mean that maybe you've pled guilty or have had a trial, but you have not yet been sentenced. Those are two very different phases in the criminal system.

And again, if you have not been bailed out and are incarcerated and have not been granted release, you are in a pretrial facility until your case is resolved or until you're granted release, either as a condition of your sentence or unless you're transferred to another facility.

When I see the language, or I hear the language—again, this is in the context of a criminal defense attorney. I, you know, I don't want to speak for the data or what the data was intended to be used for.

But criminal convictions, in this context that we're speaking of, usually means that there's been a judgment, they've been convicted—you know, the layman's term for convicted of a crime. But that doesn't mean the case is necessarily all the way over because a lot of—in Hawaii, you only have two choices if you're convicted of a crime for felony offenses.

Petty misdemeanor and misdemeanors are different. That's generally not the community that we're seeing. We've never really had to have as serious conversations about immigration with before. We are seeing that now, though, increase quite frequently.

But in Hawaii, if you're convicted of a felony offense, the court has only two choices. You're either going to go on probation or court supervision of some sort, or you're going to go to prison. So, someone could have a conviction from three years ago, still be on probation. And that's when I spoke to ICE enforcement.

Those are the kinds of stories that we're seeing. Those are the kinds of things that we're seeing, somebody who resolved something a long time ago on supervision, no new offenses and then picked up, so.

I want to pause.

Yeah.

So, you have had an, a situation where you have someone who is on supervision, no new charges and has been picked up, and how are you alerted to that?

We are alerted to it—we've, again, this is anecdotal, but we've been alerted to it through a variety of ways, either through family members calling to ask if something happened. We've received calls from some clients.

There have also been clients who have been on supervision but may have a pending probation violation matter, like perhaps they weren't reporting, or perhaps they missed an appointment, or didn't provide their pay stubs, or didn't show up for a drug test, or something like that. So, it triggers a motion to revoke or modify their probation.

We've seen when that's filed and that's pending, then the clients have been picked up by ICE as well. So, it's a version of variety of things that we've seen.

But again, and I want to emphasize so like this, these, the statistic, Ms. Fernandez, is 23, 47% of 2025 detainers were for individuals with pending criminal charges.

That's a stat that I took down, yeah. 23. Yeah, 47%.

And so, that means that they are actually being picked up with the help and the facilitation of someone sitting at the jails or the prisons?

I can't speak to that. If they are in custody, you would imagine that they would, perhaps. Again, we can't speak to that. I don't know. But some of them may not. I don't think we have a stat for how many of those are in or out of custody. They could be on bond status they could be unsupervised release status.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay. Ms. Fernandez, is there any way to know of this caseload in Hawaii that we're looking at from this data to know what countries and places of deportation these people are being picked up from?

That is in the data spreadsheet. However, it's not always completely pleated. If you open up the sheets, you'll see that there is a column for that, but it's, it seems blank in a lot of cases.

Okay. But we're also—oh, and we're seeing birth countries and citizenship countries. And it's, it's, it's wide ranging, very wide ranging. Okay.

And then I just want to circle back. For those with pending criminal charges, the way it should be resolved is that they should go through the entire process.

If you were in contact with them, Ms. Chang, your agency would be taking them through the entire process, get them to the point of supervision or release, and then that's how the criminal portion would be resolved. And then they could—the notion being that once they resolved all their issues, paid their debt to society, then they are law abiding citizens and they're back in the community.

They're reintegrated into communities, that the correct process that should be followed.

That, I think, is the goal, if we are truly a rehabilitative and restorative justice system, which I believe we strive to be.

The Public Defender's involvement with our clients all the way to the end often results in that, what you've just described, but it often will extend to those that probation or community supervision is not an option, either because they're a statutory repeat offender and prison is mandatory, and then we'll help them with their parole proceedings.

But again, of course, always the goal is restore—rehabilitation—I believe, and I think that's the mandate of DCR as well, so.

Okay, and one last question, then we'll jump to the policy recommendations. I guess, you know, I'm really concerned with this set of individuals who may have pending criminal charges, and sometimes you're talking about things that are not serious violations. They're being pulled back into the system because of missed court dates or things like that.

How does the Office of the Public Defenders, if someone who is pending criminal charges, you have an active criminal case with them, how do you folks ever find out what happens with that individual? Or are they just disappearing?

Unless we receive confirm—or, and, and I guess I don't even know if I'd call it confirmation or, you know, incredibly reliable data—we don't receive anything directly from any federal agencies. It's anecdotal, so we will get tidbits. Sometimes we've heard from sheriffs at the variety of the courthouses, he has—he's going to be detained.

We've heard from, like I said, family members. We've gotten calls. We've actually tried to inquire with our—we like to call them our sister agency—the Federal Public Defenders, who have more access to federal information than the—our state office does.

And then, we've been able to confirm, yes, they are, in fact, in custody. We'll check the Bureau of Prisons, which is a public database, to see, but beyond that, the result of any proceedings, why they were initially brought in, we're not privy to that information and nor are we provided it.

May I clarify something about the data set? You asked about whether we knew anything about the birth and citizenship countries of people who are being affected.

We do actually have that information in Column N and O of the ICE detainers in Hawaii spreadsheet that I think you have access to. It's the departure country in port of departure that has a lot of blank entries.

Okay. Okay, let's start moving to the second part of this, the policy proposals, because I think we've learned some disturbing facts that we know are, you know, the increase. Oh, wait, let me.

Before I forget, you know, at a recent visit at, I believe, Halawa Correctional Facility with the Restrictive Housing Working Group, one of the conversations I had with one of the employees there was that there was an individual who, as I believe, picked up, was being released, but then was being picked up by ICE.

And so that was, for me, a confirmation that it is happening. And I was a little bit disturbed by learning that information. So in that situation, and what I understood when I pressed the conversation was, well, that person was set to leave the system, ran his name, and it was picked up that he had an ICE detainer.

And so ICE was alerted and he was picked up there. That could fall in under any of these categories. Right. Of someone. Well, just being a detainer, just being presented.

Generally, if you are getting released from. And again, I don't want to go into the minutia things too deeply, but if you're at Halawa Correctional, that. That's our prison, State of Hawaii prison. We have other prison facilities like Kulani and Wava, but there's a very different.

The terminologies are different because jail and prison, our different facilities and have different functions. For most of our clients or our incarcerated individuals who are housed at Halawa, there are few exceptions, but most of them are going to be those who are serving a prison sentence. Now, I have seen clients be deported after they.

And this is before our current Administration, be deported after serving a sentence because there are, you know, aggravated felonies that are automatically deportable. There are a plethora of ways that you might become eligible for deportation.

So that specific instance, I'm not sure if there was already, you know, we have had clients who go directly to their deportation proceedings after they finish their sentence.

But I think the difference for us is that's not what the shocking thing is, I think, to our earlier point is that the frequency with which it's happening for those that are out of custody and those that we traditionally wouldn't see immigration get involved previously, I think that's the stark difference that we're seeing. Okay. Yeah.

If that helps.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right, so let's shift to the policy recommendations, and I think that's probably more Ms. Fernandes's round. Go ahead.

Great.

So we've been seeing a lot of movement across the country, not just in the last year, but of course, throughout the biden Administration and President Trump's First Administration as well to help safeguard our communities against unwarranted invasion from federal agencies.

And, and one of the things that we can do is we can require a lot more transparency in our policing to see who is in our streets.

There's been, because there's been so much uncertainty, it spreads a lot of fear not just within immigrant communities, but across the state, our entire population, when we don't know if somebody is a federal agent or not.

This has led to issues reported around like possible, you know, impersonation, but also it just creates this culture of fear and uncertainty. Right. And so one thing that California has done is severely restricted masking and concealment of identity of all law enforcement agents. So that's local police as well. I'll say that.

You know, this is kind of colloquially known as the mask ban. This does not apply to medical masks, you know, used to prevent the transmission of communicable diseases like Covid.

This is about, these are, if you've seen like the full neck gaiters that are up to the eyeballs, things like that, where it's just concealment for concealment's sake is also requiring officers to clearly identify themselves as such is really important.

We can also impose a ban on coordinates Cooperative 287 agreements between our law enforcement here at the local and state level and our federal agencies so that local and state police are not deputized to carry out the immigration agenda. We can also impose safeguards around sensitive locations.

There was previously a policy in place that limited immigration enforcement around schools and hospitals, places of worship. This has since been rolled back and so we can do more at the state level to protect these sensitive locations there.

Also we've seen, we're worried of course about due process violations and we've heard anecdotally that at FDC interpreters are not having, are having a very difficult time getting in to see clients and so people may not even know what's going on.

A Truth act style law could require that information about their detention, information about their right to request an attorney be provided immediately to somebody being held in a language they can understand. We also see one more law I'm going to highlight is a 364 day law.

And at the federal level, sentences, convictions that are, that qualify for a year or more prison sentence trigger a lot of enforcement actions, can trigger Federal Immigration Enforcement actions. So what some states have done to combat that is take misdemeanors and instead of 365 days as a possible sentence it's 364 days.

There are many other protective measures that you folks could explore, and we'd be happy to work with this Committee and others to put those together.

Questions? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Thank you for these recommendations. Regarding the public defender, I had a question about can a judge are federal officers immune from a state judge's contempt of court order? Like can a judge issue a contempt of court if, say, a defendant has.

Should be appearing in court or is summoned by the judge in a case to appear in 10 hours or whatever, and then a federal court agency or officer like, is detaining this person and could there, could the judge order a contempt of court of a federal officer?

I. Meaning if there is an outright refusal to transport someone for their court proceeding. Correct. Okay, so what to answer the question, I. I don't think. I'm not sure if there's legally anything explicitly prohibiting the court from doing that. But in practicality, I don't see a state judge ever doing that. And the reason is this.

If we do know that there is somebody who is. Has a pending state matter who is in federal custody, there is a very specific pro. Process that the agencies need to go through in order to physically move a body. And I don't mean to say the term body disrespectfully.

That's just sort of how we refer to them in, you know, in the criminal system, there are procedures in place to physically bring a body from federal custody to a state court proceeding and it's through a writ.

So anytime someone's in federal custody and they need to be brought to state court because they have offending a pending matter. For example, we do have clients that have pending cases in both federal and state court.

Nothing to do with immigration, but perhaps they have a criminal case in federal court and a pending criminal case in state court. Whoever, whichever agency has primary custody of the body, often it is federal custody. We won't be able to get them to state court unless there is a writ in place.

Now, if a writ was overtly disobeyed, which I've personally never seen happen in my career, I don't know what the recourse is. But in practical terms, I think it would just get continued to refile the writ and then bring the body.

I've also never heard of a situation where a federal agency has outright refused to bring somebody to court using, you know, for some discretionary reason. I've not seen that. I'm not sure if that's responsive. But in practical, in the practical way, That I think court works.

I don't see a judge doing that, even if they may have the legal authority to, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that. And then if I may, Chair. Go ahead.

Regarding, you mentioned that the Office of the Public Defender doesn't really do immigration, but with the numbers rising of individual of your clients who are maybe getting swept and then they're being denied justice in a way, I mean, many ways, from their criminal proceeding to have their name absolved, if they're innocent, all of that gets removed.

Should there. Or, you know, you probably know that the Legislature allocated specific money to the Attorney General's Office to defend against Trump's, you know, Executive orders and some of what he's been doing.

Is there a possibility that the Legislature could also set aside some money for the public defenders to actually bring on more immigration attorneys in these situations where their. Their rights and the duties that you guys are kind of set out to do is being curtailed by ICE?

And I really appreciate that question, and this is something that we've dialogued with other legislators and something that in the short response to your question is, absolutely, we need, but I want to clarify that we don't need an immigration attorney to advocate for our clients in immigration court.

What we do need is an immigration attorney, because like I said, as much as I try, and my attorneys try very hard and are very diligently trying to keep up with the landscape of immigration law, it is incredibly nuanced. It's very overwhelming. And we are not immigration attorneys, nor are we immigration experts.

It's like if you were to ask a civil attorney about criminal law, most of them wouldn't know much about it. And likewise, I know virtually nothing about civil law.

But what we do need, and we are actually mandated through the United States Supreme Court as well as Supreme Court opinions in the State of Hawaii, we are mandated to advise our clients about immigration consequences in all of their criminal cases. We are mandated to do so. And it's not just, oh, you could be deported.

The, the analysis goes way beyond that. We are required to investigate their immigration status, investigate possible consequences, and advise them accordingly, even though we are not experts. And that arena.

So that's really the scope of what the public defenders needs to do, and that's how we can better represent our clients and safeguard their rights in the criminal system as well as in possible or future immigration proceedings that may result. So, absolutely.

And I wanted to just supplement my very short response, which is, yes, to offer an explanation as to why we will Take funding and help in any way, shape or form that we can take it.

But this, specifically the issue of immigration is a critical need for our office, especially given the change in the landscape of this Administration and what we're seeing recently.

So maybe chair can clarify for me normally a department's budget, their Department head would communicate with the Executive branch, the Governor, who then submits a budget request to the Legislature. So yeah, so please make sure that the Office of the Public Defender puts that request up to the Governor so that we can consider it.

We are in the process of doing that right now.

I mean, we're in that the Executive is in that budget process currently. Yes. And I will definitely keep in contact with the Committee about doing so.

Thank you so much for the question. Thank you for very much for the ACLU. You did not mention body cams in your, one of your suggestions. But I do know that when we.

Well, so when I was on the board of aslu, we went up to Mauna Kea to be legal observers of not the Lohui, not the activists and the protectors of the Mauna, but of the state government actors who were sent to Mauna Kea.

Like it was our job as legal observers to watch what they were doing to make sure that they were maintaining they were respecting the rights of the individ, the citizens who were gathered. Do you think it could be? I mean, it's difficult for a state to require federal actors to turn on a body cam.

However, should our state law enforcement officers, or any law enforcement officer in the state, meaning county police officers, or maybe even, I'm not sure if the Hawaii State National Guard, if those are considered state actors.

But for all of those individuals to have body cams on them and to serve as legal observers of all interactions between ICE, again, broadly ICE, whenever they interact with a resident of our state, could that be a valuable solution or safeguard?

I think it's definitely possible. And the ACLU has proposed very nuanced body camp legislation before. I know that the individual police departments have developed their own policies. It is a very complicated issue.

What I will say is that individuals have the First Amendment right to film officers out in public as long as they're not obstructing like the actual efforts. And so you do have the First Amendment right to film police, film, ICE film agents if you see them carrying out efforts out in public.

Got it. But I think when we have the state law enforcement agency here, here before this Committee in the past, they did indicate that sometimes the federal agencies will communicate with local law enforcement to say, hey, heads up, we're going to be in this area or whatever.

And if we authorize them to actually show up at those locations with their body cams on to monitor, that's next level. Right. Of being able to engage our local law enforcement to actually protect residents from possibly people who were subcontracted and don't understand how they're violating residents rights.

Yeah, I mean, that's definitely possible. And I can look into whether and how that's been done in other states as part of, under the umbrella of immigration policy. I hadn't heard of that before, but I can. I've worked on the body camera issue before. As you know, I remember our trip to Mauna Kea very fondly and.

But yeah, I'm very happy to look into it and get back to you. Thank you. So I'll follow that now. I guess I'll wrap this up. So we want to finish at 11:30. Thank you for the kind of laundry list of possible legislation that we could, could pass.

There are two in particular that I'm very interested in because they seem to need maybe more attention in light of the new data that we're seeing. And just to again emphasize that thread that Ms. Chang was talking about that what we're seeing is a frequency of these ICE pickups for those who are not in custody.

So these are pickups that are potentially happening out in community guests.

Right.

So maybe the first question would be about the question of safeguards again for sensitive locations. We had a bill last session, House Bill 440, that focused on schools, healthcare facilities. I think those were the main entities. But are we seeing laws that also spell out that courtrooms should be places of sensitive, sensitive location?

So that's something that we could include in that bill. And then to Ms. Chang's point, that we have seen activity of pickups. And my understanding was that we were told that again, the judiciary supposedly had a policy that none of this would be happening, but it is in fact happening.

We were informed that after a conversation, again, this is just information that we received that through conversations with Homeland Security that we, and this was early on, that ICE would not be entering courthouses. And that was, that was several, several months ago, though.

And again, I don't know, we did not directly communicate with either the judiciary or Homeland Security on that issue.

But we, I am aware that that was previously told to, to people and.

That we have recently had an incident out Wailuku Courthouse. Yes, and I believe. Yes. And that was in the courthouse is my understanding from the Deputies that were.

There inside the courthouse.

Were the agents marked and identified as ICE agents? I'm not confident on that. I can get that information if that would be helpful.

But let me double check my.

I don't believe they were identifiably marked or wearing something that indicated that they were ICE, but my understanding of the situation is that he was detained inside the courthouse.

Okay.

Now on this issue of the sensitive location, so I'm seeing a head nod from Ms. Fernandes that we could in fact include courthouses in the sensitive locations bill.

And that would be kind of appropriate policy to adopt. Yeah. So I think what I would propose is legislation that creates a warrant requirement for state funded facilities and for any law enforcement seeking entry for various purposes.

And that would be a judicial warrant. Yes. Or, or yeah, there's warrants that are issued by law, prosecutors offices or, you know, law enforcement agencies that don't pass through the judiciary first. And we, and I think those would be appropriate if they had a warrant. Right. Either a law enforcement warrant. Like if there was a.

And when I say law enforcement warrant, that means somebody has been, has an arrest warrant because the police believe there's probable cause to have committed a crime. That's a very normal part of our criminal proceeding.

Just, just to, to be clear that I'm not saying that we like the, that process, but that is a normal part of the criminal process and it is outlined in our, our rules.

Okay, yeah. But then I want to make this distinction between a judicial warrant and administrative warrant.

It should be a judicial warrant that goes through a judge's hands.

Yes. Okay. So people, and I wouldn't be the ACLU if I didn't flag that. If ICE does come to your door and you have a private residence, unless there is a warrant signed by a judge that has the, the name of the person and the address, you do not have to let them.

Okay. I want to add, because again, I'm really concerned about, you know, we are seeing this increase. We know that it's happening at places of employment.

Should we not just articulate a policy to make it clear for any private employer that there are, you know, if it's a private area within a private employment context, that that is not also a place where anyone can just barge in?

I want to follow up with the specifics, but that raises a flag in my mind because there has been a successful challenge to restrictions on employers giving, like cooperating with federal agencies for immigration enforcement. So there's a difference here between what we can prohibit of other state funded facilities and what we could prohibit of private actors.

Okay. Because I will say, I think that there is a growing concern amongst private employers as to what their rights are and what their business rights are to allow for access.

Yes. And private businesses, again, you do not have to cooperate absent a judicial warrant.

Okay.

And so the. My last question again, and I think maybe Ms. Cheng, you answered it. For these sightings of ICE around the courthouses, have you folks become aware of it because of, of any identification that these were Ayes or federal agents?

Or was it like, like what I want to understand is that I think it's really important that, you know, we know who people are when they approach our in, you know, if they have official duties, we need to know who they are so that there shouldn't be any sort of secret folks walking around and then presenting a paper or, you know, and threatening somebody.

And then I want to understand what is the way in which these folks are being identified and whether or not we need to have more stronger policies, like no secret police policies.

We would definitely advocate for the, you know, anti secret police policies. I think how we have been made aware generally that ICE has been in or around the courthouses is early on we were seeing actual vehicles, marked vehicles.

But in terms of the individuals that were outside or, you know, patrolling around or present at the courthouse, I, My understanding is that most of them, I can't speak to all the specifics of every interaction or observation that my attorneys have made, but most of them have not been wearing visibly identifiable articles of clothing that would identify them as ICE agents.

Okay.

Do you want to add anything, anything to that, Ms. Fernandes? Okay. All right. This has been very helpful to shed some light. I think we need to continue to dive into the data that we're seeing coming out of the deportation project.

I would ask, you know, Ms. Fernandes, as you guys continue to monitor that, that gathering of information, if there's more findings that are coming from that. And I understand, like, we're working in a space where one, the federal shutdown has caused it to not flow.

The information not flowing, but there's, it's also not flowing because there's not really requirements of transparency amongst agencies. And so it's not that we're operating in the dark, but we're operating with the best information that we have.

And so if you find anything that, that is more disturbing in this data, that you please continue to alert the community. Because what we are left with is both layering anecdote with whatever data can be collected nationally. And I think some of These things. Anecdotally, I've heard of increased numbers of detainees in the federal detention center.

Not talked about here. But we know that there are also people who are being flown and moved from center to center. So we haven't even touched that topic.

Last week, you know, I was talking with the family of Rogeria Rajo and how he was picked up, and there was another woman also in the crowd there who was saying that this was actually a resident, that there was a parent who was a resident of Hawaii, had not really committed any serious matters, but had missed the date, and then was quickly, quickly flown to another place.

So I'm not just concerned about them disappearing off the streets. They may actually be disappearing out of our state. And these are our residents. We are getting anecdotal reports of that.

I'm seeing you nodding, Ms. Fernandes. Are you. Can you add to any of that? Have you heard any of those? I've heard similar things. So not everything can be reflected by the data. A lot is. And I'll say that the data, these data sets were collected because they were sought out. Right.

This is not stuff that the Federal Government is posting, though. Also, they pulled from publicly available information and things that the Federal Government had posted. But these are all FOIA requests. So because they have to be FOIA'd, it can be a little bit delayed.

But we'll continue to update the Committee and others as we get more updated data. Yeah, but that is all. Yeah, very much aligned with what we were. I was hearing. I spoke to. We also have an immigrant rights attorney that is on board, and that is something that she has been hearing as well.

I want to flag on the subject of attorneys, before I forget one, it is possible to set up, like, a state or even local funds to fund representation for people facing possible deportation, because you do have the right to counsel. You have a right to an attorney, but you are not entitled to one.

So you or you have a right to seek representation. I mean, but you're not entitled to it. So they don't have to appoint you an attorney for immigration proceedings, but you do have a right to seek one.

Okay, thank you for that clarification. Thank you for this information. I think it's really important that we keep informing our policy decisions with the data we have available with the stories we are hearing, because that's all that we're left with. And we know that those stories are are slowly emerging out into the community.

And every time we hear it, it just concerns me because I do not want to be that kind of state where people who had the knowledge and the power to do something about it failed to do something about it.

I don't think we can afford to be that, because we cannot, as I said, and I started off this hearing with, we cannot afford to be the kind of community that turns our back on people so that they just disappear. So that they just disappear outside of our borders. On that note, thank you again.

We will make the information that was shared by the ACLU available on the Committee website. And please continue to keep in touch with the Committee.

On that note, we are adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.