Specifically for educators, the session will cover basic legal information regarding immigration enforcement efforts
Posted: May 15, 2025
The Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association is teaming with U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda (D, Hawaiʻi), the ACLU Hawaiʻi, and the Hawai‘i Coalition for Immigrant Rights to present a virtual Know Your Rights for Educators: Immigration Enforcement session.
The virtual session will be held on Tuesday, May 20, from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.
At the session, educators will hear from U.S Rep. Jill Tokuda, HSTA President Osa Tui, Jr., and ACLU Hawaiʻi Executive Director Salmah Y. Rizvi. Then, Sergio Alcubilla, the ACLU Hawaiʻi’s Director of Community Engagement, will lead a training along with Liza Ryan Gill from the Hawaiʻi Coalition for Immigrant Rights. The session will provide educators basic legal information regarding recent immigration enforcement efforts and individual rights.
The session will conclude with a Q&A, and educators are encouraged to submit their questions ahead of time on the registration page. You may also ask questions anonymously during the session. Please be advised that Hawaiʻi news media outlets will be invited to watch and listen to the online session.
For those who can’t attend, the session will be recorded and shared on HSTA’s website and YouTube channel afterward.
We know that HSTA members are worried about how immigration enforcement can affect their students, themselves, their schools and communities. With just one day’s notice, more than 40 people, most of them teachers, showed up in Kona to speak with U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda (D, Hawaiʻi) about those concerns on Saturday. Read our story about that meeting here.
HSTA is asking the Hawaiʻi State Department of Education to affirm that it won’t retaliate or discipline school employees who refuse to participate in immigration enforcement. The union also wants HIDOE to require administrators to be trained on immigration enforcement issues.
In a letter to Schools Superintendent Keith Hayashi on Wednesday, HSTA Deputy Director Andrea Eshelman said, “Educators across Hawaiʻi remain deeply concerned about the potential impact of heightened immigration enforcement, not only on students and their families, but also on school employees.”
On May 8, the HSTA held a news conference during which a Maui teacher shared the harrowing story of gun-toting federal agents waking her and about 10 public school teachers here on non-immigrant visas just after 6 a.m. on May 6. The feds detained them for at least 45 minutes in a raid searching for a felon who apparently hadn’t lived in the home for more than a year.
The teacher, a U.S. citizen, called the erroneous raid “overwhelming and traumatic.” She lives in a multi-family dwelling in Kahului with about 10 other teachers from the Philippines working in various public schools on Maui under the federal governmentʻs J1 visa program.