Immigrant advocates offer advice to educators about immigration enforcement

Federal immigration authorities have a list of roughly 100 children on Maui, Oʻahu, and Hawaiʻi Island for whom they are looking, allegedly to check on their welfare, an immigrant advocate told teachers during a Know Your Rights for Educators: Immigration Enforcement webinar Tuesday night.

The hour-long Zoom session, sponsored by U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda (D, Hawaiʻi), the ACLU Hawaiʻi, Hawaiʻi Coalition for Immigrant Rights, and the Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association, provided educators basic legal and contractual information regarding recent immigration enforcement efforts and individual rights. Nearly 100 people viewed the webinar live.

In introductory remarks, HSTA President Osa Tui said, “We are very disturbed by what we saw happening on Maui and what we continue to see happening on the Big Island.” He was referring to a mistaken raid in Kahului where the feds detained more than 10 teachers, as well as several reports from the Kona side of Hawaiʻi Island of immigration authorities taking children of immigrants into custody.

“I especially want to thank the ACLU for conducting this Know Your Rights webinar for our educators. It was a session provided to our members similar to this one, which provided valuable information and proved to be most helpful on the day that the Maui teachers were raided,” Tui added.

Tokuda joined the webinar from her apartment in the nation’s capital.

“This Know Your Rights seminar that we’re doing right now came out of just heartbreaking conversations that I had while I was home the other week. Both talking on Maui and in a library in Kona. It was heartbreaking to hear about children who were looking over their shoulders, afraid to walk home. Feeling as if they were being used as bait to somehow entrap their family or their loved ones,” Tokuda said.

“We are living in a world of fear right now. And as educators, as community advocates and leaders, it really is our responsibility and job to support each other, stick together. But also, we really have to find our power in knowledge and have the courage to be able to use it effectively,” she added.

“We are in the midst of a constitutional crisis,” Tokuda said. “The rule of law, due process. It’s all under fire. We see it absolutely every day.”

Feds have a list of 100 unaccompanied Hawaiʻi minors they are looking for

Hawaiʻi Coalition for Immigrant Rights Executive Director Liza Ryan Gill said, “Homeland Security investigation has a list of 100 unaccompanied minors, mostly on Hawaiʻi Island and on Maui, some on Oʻahu,” for whom they are searching, for the purported purpose of making welfare checks.

Gill said, “They may be looking for those children, and that might lead to their detention.”

“At this point in time, we do not have a confirmed report of an ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) activity on a school campus during school,” she added.

However, her organization has received “multiple reports” of ICE activity in the vicinity of schools, Gill said.

If people see federal authorities arresting children in immigration cases, she asks that they document what is going on.

Provide “the exact date and time, the child and the location, whether it happened in a classroom or administrative (building) or outside in the parking lot. All of those things are very, very valuable,” Gill said.

ACLU offers practical advice for teachers at schools

Nathan Lee, policy legislative fellow of the ACLU of Hawaiʻi, told educators during the webinar,

“If ICE shows up at schools, you have no obligation to comply with them if they do not have a judicial warrant, especially in private locations, which schools should be careful to mark.”

Private locations include classrooms, while public areas would be the school entrance area and the front office, Lee said.

To access school facilities or records, federal agents must present a judicial warrant, not just an administrative warrant, he added. To enter private property, the feds must show a judicial warrant that is signed by a judge and specifies the name of someone or precise address, Lee explained.

“What we’re seeing is sometimes ICE enforcement officers will try to use an administrative warrant or a deportation order, which is not a judicial warrant and which does not allow access to private locations legally,” he said.

“If officers are not complying or they’re refusing to show you a (judicial) warrant, or they’re saying, we don’t need a warrant, we’re gonna come into the school anyway. You should not try to physically impede them, but you should document them, record their behavior, and be clear that you have a right to record, so long as you don’t directly, physically interfere with the arrest,” Lee told the webinar.

An officer might say, “There’s an emergency, there are all these circumstances that mean we don’t have time to talk to you, we just need immediate access to the school,” Lee said.

In that case, he advised educators to be clear and ask open-ended questions, including who, who, what, when, where, and why.

“Instead of saying, ‘Is it an emergency?’ To which the answer might be a quick yes, ask questions like, ‘Why do you think that there is an emergency,’ or ‘What factors do you have in mind that require me to give you access to the school instead of having you talk to the principal or the vice principal?’” Lee suggested.

In addition, Lee said, “When dealing with ICE agents, we encourage folks to exercise their right to remain silent, especially if asked questions that might self-incriminate.”

“So in this context, saying things like, ‘I want to use my right to not answer questions,’ or ‘I exercise my right to remain silent,’ is within your Fifth Amendment right, Lee said.

“You should not answer questions about criminal or immigration history when asked by ICE agents or by people whom you suspect may be ICE agents. And additionally, don’t lie or show false documents,” Lee added.

Echoing HIDOE advice, advocates say teachers should direct authorities to principals, vice principals, other administrators

Gill, from the Hawaiʻi Coalition for Immigrant Rights, told educators on the Zoom, “If you see a strange person in a strange uniform on your campus asking for information, ʻWhere is such and such student?’ I would not respond to that.”

Gill said educators should tell the law enforcement officer, “That’s not me. I’m not the person who deals with this. Let’s go find my principal, or let’s go find the person who is in charge on this day on this issue, and immediately move towards that authorized person. And just make sure that you are not giving consent,” Gill said.

“I know that we are helpful people who want to do the right thing, especially when authorities come and ask us something. But this is a difficult moment where you may need to say, ‘We’re not allowing you into our classroom,’ and I know who the authorized person is who I’m going to direct you to,” Gill said.

Also, Gill told educators to be “mindful that anything that you have out and in plain view, they can use that information.”

“They would not be likely to come into your classroom, but if you had papers with your students’ names on them, maybe flip those over,” Gill advised.

“What is really important is that adults who are in danger, who are fearful that they might be removed, that they have a clear plan, and they have updated their contact list for who should be called if they are not able to go to the school to pick up their child. This also means potentially signing a power of attorney if they feel, as a parent, that the best thing for their child is that their child not be detained and deported with the parent, then they need to have a power of attorney or a designated adult that is going to be the person who is both on the contact list for school, for the next person to call, and that they have the legal rights to temporarily care for that child,” Gill added.

ACLU Hawaiʻi Executive Director Salmah Y. Rizvi said, “Teachers are guardians of our children after their parents. They are mentors, protectors, and defenders of truth. And just as we would shield our own children from harm, we must shield those who stand beside them every day.”

“Our schools should be sanctuaries, not sites of surveillance,” Rizvi added.

The ACLU has posted a webinar from earlier this year with advice about interacting with ICE agents.

HSTA advocates for its members concerned about immigration enforcement

The 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 May 14, 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.”

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 during a meeting coordinated by HSTA on May 10. Read our story about that meeting here.

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.