At least two people arrested by federal immigration officers on Thursday at immigration court in San Francisco have since been flown to Hawaii, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
They are now being held in the Federal Detention Center Honolulu, a federal prison, according to ICE’s online detainee search tracker.
There are no ICE detention centers in Hawaii, so the federal government has placed immigrants in prisons. In February, ICE signed an agreement with the Federal Bureau of Prisons — part of the Justice Department — to reserve space for ICE detainees, according to the Honolulu Civil Beat, which reported residents from out of state being transferred to Hawaii as early as June.
Immigration lawyers in Hawaii told the Civil Beat that they are concerned residents of other states are not getting effective counsel in Hawaii; even if they had a lawyer, it’s difficult to stay in touch from thousands of miles away, they told the Civil Beat.
Mission Local witnessed both arrests last week. ICE swarmed both people immediately after they exited routine court hearings at immigration court, at 630 Sansome St.
In both cases, an attorney with the Department of Homeland Security moved to dismiss their cases, a tactic the Trump administration is increasingly using to detain and fast-track asylum-seekers out of the country.
One of the arrestees was a man whose courtroom demeanor — he was mumbling to himself through the morning — led the immigration-court judge to say he appeared to be mentally impaired.
“It’s obvious to me that there are competency issues,” the judge, Patrick O’Brien, said at the time. ICE arrested the man moments later, anyway.
There are no ICE detention centers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Many people arrested in the Bay Area are placed in detention centers in the Central Valley or Southern California, though some people recently arrested in the Bay Area have since been flown to Arizona and Texas.
Do you know about how many people have been deported or self deported since the Trump mess started?
Not enough
Careful Darcy, they want to deport US citizens also. They said so.
We know you think it can never happen to you… look around. It can.
Lucky them! Hawaii sounds a lot nicer for these people who came here illegally to take jobs from people here legally than Sudan or Guantanamo.
Do you really think US citizens are willing to work the jobs that these migrants work? That is absurd, almost as absurd as the notion that it’s “nice” to be in prison in Hawaii. These folks should be given a path to citizenship not criminalized for filling jobs that otherwise would not be done.
Don’t be disgusting.
Not all arrestees are here illegally. And nobody else wanted to work the farms whose produce will is now rotting.
How many packs of strawberries did you pick as a result of your new job openings?
Yeah. That’s what I thought. Back to your nintendo switch.