The URL can be used to link to this page

Home My WebLink AboutCOM 0125.043 2024-2026P / Courtcll R9s .7q_25 comm.1Z From: Mina Elison Sent: Monday, March 31, 2025 12:43 PM To: Council Testimony Subject: Testimony in Opposition to Resolution 74-25; ICE MOU Greetings Council Members and Mayor, My testimony pertains to Resolution 74 - 25: ICE MOU. I strongly object to Hawaii County Police entering into ANY MOU with ICE because it will cause horrific suffering to the people of our island. I live in Ke'ei, Kona Hema. I know what the presence of ICE means to everyone who lives in areas that ICE claims it has the right to control. Since 1994, both Democratic and Republican administrations constructed a huge and intertwined surveillance, military, police, incarceration complex at our southern border, increasingly at our northern border, and everywhere throughout the interior of our country. This complex is a for -profit enterprise. For example, 80%+ of ICE prisons are for -profit. This complex is considered a massive growth industry, according to 2025 earnings calls that the corporations building and maintaining this complex host for investors. Our little island's MOU is part of a strategic plan to exploit and eliminate our civil and human rights to profit a few huge corporations and a few ruthless tyrants in Washington DC. We now have an authoritarian federal regime that is using many methods to expand its control over our country. A primary way the regime is accomplishing this is by usurping local governments' governing powers by taking over their local law enforcement through ICE. They do this through ICE's memorandums of understanding (MOUs) with local law enforcement: imbed ICE into a police force so that the local police obey orders from the federal regime NOT local government leaders. These local police are ICE extensions that threaten, arrest and control local populations, including local political leaders. Now Hawaii County is being strong-armed into passing our own ICE MOU. I urge you to resist. Do not enter into any ICE MOU, because it's disastrous for our people. Here's why: 1. An ICE MOU will increase crime in our communities. As a former prosecutor in Los Angeles at a time of intense anti -immigrant sentiment, I personally experienced how the protection of our communities from common criminals - which is the bread and butter day job of local law enforcement - was harmed by immigration enforcement officers trying to infiltrate and co-opt local law enforcement. Working in heavily Hispanic, Black and Asian communities, I was told by countless witnesses, victims and their family members and neighbors that they would not cooperate with local police or prosecutors because they were afraid that helping to solve crimes in their communities would necessarily result in their family, friends and neighbors getting deported. These decisions were made by citizens as well as undocumented people because many families, neighborhoods, schools and places of employment were populated by BOTH citizens and undocumented people who needed each other and cared for each other. Better to endure spousal abuse, children being molested, homes and cars being broken into, shops robbed, drug dealing, than to see their loved ones permanently exiled. It was a terrible Catch-22 and therefore it was difficult to persuade people to cooperate with law enforcement. Moreover, the bad guys knew it. This ICE MOU places ICE literally inside local police facilities where they will undertake joint exercises and endeavors controlled by federal authorities! comm. � L 1 Raf. To: — Ref. Daya To our local community there will be no difference between ICE and local police! Today's ICE MOUs will cause an increase in crime and hostility within communities and between local law enforcement and communities. 2. Recruitment of local police officers is already difficult and will become more so. When local police are seen as enforcers of this island's historic colonizers and yet another example of mainland takeover, what will this do to recruitment? If local police are seen as hand in hand with the same federal officials who desecrate cultural sites, force the telescope and leases for army bombing fields and poison Oahu's water and land, freeze funding to local schools and agriculture, hand in hand with the same people who hunt and disappear our local community members, local police recruitment will become severely compromised. They will be seen as traitors. 3. More people are now arrested by ICE than Border Patrol; ICE will collapse our economy . Almost 50'% more people are arrested by ICE than Border Patrol and that trend is moving upward. That means ever more people are being arrested and deported from the interior of our country and not at our borders. Once ICE co- opts our local law enforcement, the number of arrests and deportations here will soar. ICE is swiftly expanding everywhere - their arrest record reflects that. We already have a serious labor shortage here in Hawai'i. But when ICE operates here as it wishes through this MOU, whole industries will collapse: agriculture, construction, health care. And it won't "only" be undocumented people. ICE is already arresting and deporting permanent residents with green cards, people who are married to US citizens and are here legally adjusting their status, people who are here on legal work and student visas. It won't "only" be those arrested who leave, it will be citizens who love these people and who can't bear to be parted from them. Imagine the consequences for our economy, people will go hungry and bankrupt. 4. We owe it to our ancestors to prevent what the federal government did to them being repeated upon us today. During WWII, local Japanese and German patriots were imprisoned and deported. Our ancestors suffered, fought and died to protect their and our rights and Hawaiian communities from federal oppression. And here ICE is today with its racial profiling and lawless behavior - again! 5. Of particular discriminatory concern is the new ICE "Alien Enemies Validation Guide". The guide directs ICE to arrest as gang members anyone they suspect of having gang tattoos on their bodies. These "gang members" will then be exiled to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Countless people who are NOT gang members are already in that prison right now. ICE says it is currently focused on a Venezuelan gang but this focus on tattoos can be expanded to any group. This is especially chilling to a community such as ours where tattoos are extremely common. These tattoos could be read as "foreign" "alien" "other" "enemy" to ICE officers from the mainland who have no education or interest in our local culture --especially when the people with tattoos are people of color. Our federal regime's leaders have openly expressed their frustration at the slow rate at which ICE is arresting and deporting people. The regime ordered that ICE must fulfill an arrest quota of 1,500 people every day. There simply are not enough undocumented criminals in the USA to fulfill that quota which is why ICE is scrambling to develop new criteria to give them excuses to arrest non -criminals that they then label as criminals. People with tattoos are now filling that role. Mahalo nui for your time and consideration, Mina Elison 2