Lahaina immigrants who survived fire now wary of Trump’s deportation threats 

Dania Laborte felt chicken skin when the announcement came over the plane’s public address system in Spanish that her aircraft was cruising over Mexico.

Laborte, who grew up in Lahaina and has legal status in the U.S. through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, was returning to the country of her birth for the first time in 21 years to fulfill her uncle’s last wishes to return his body to Mexico after his death on Christmas Day 2022. She also hoped to give her grandma, who was losing her vision, one more chance to see her.

“I felt at peace, being able to go back … where the beginning of my life was,” Laborte said. “But even when I went there … I felt like I didn’t belong, because they knew that I wasn’t from there.”

For most of Laborte’s life, Lahaina has been her home. But even as a longtime resident and a DACA recipient, she’s worried about her status as President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office in January following repeated campaign promises to mass deport immigrants, which he called a priority on Day 1.

Nearly one-third of Lahaina’s population before the August 2023 wildfire came from another country, and their recovery from the blaze has been hampered in some cases by language barriers, housing costs, the decline in work and the lack of access to services reserved for U.S. citizens.

And, despite the fact that Trump’s mass deportation plans never fully materialized during his first term, one Maui immigration attorney who worked for the Senate Judiciary Committee during the former president’s first impeachment trial believes that “people should take him at his word” this time around.

“If he says he’s going to do something, assume he’s going to do it,” said Aparna Patrie, who works with the nonprofit Roots Reborn that is helping Lahaina immigrants recover from the fire. “I don’t understand how people can look at him and say, ‘that’s just bluster.’ … He and everyone under him have had four years to figure out how to be more effective this time around. And most presidents don’t get that luxury.”

ROADBLOCKS TO RECOVERY

Hawai‘i’s location in the Central Pacific and decades-long legacy of plantation agriculture has made it a hub for immigration. Of the 1.45 million people living in the state, about 260,000 (17.8%) were born in another country, above the national average of 14.3%, according to 2023 U.S. Census Bureau data.

O‘ahu had the highest percentage of foreign-born residents at 19.6%, followed by Maui County at 17.4%. The foreign-born population in Lahaina made up an even larger portion of the community at 30.9% of the roughly 12,000 residents. 

Estimates of the number of undocumented immigrants in Hawai’i are harder to pin down. The 2018 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey put the number at about 41,000 or 3.3% of the population, while the Migration Policy Institute has estimated that there are 51,000 undocumented immigrants, mostly from the Philippines (46%). They also come from Micronesia (18%), China or Hong Kong (7%) and Mexico and Central America (6%). 

Nadine Ortega, executive director of Tagnawa, a grassroots organization dedicated to representing the Filipino community in Lahaina, said undocumented immigrants are known in Tagalog as “tago ng tago,” which means “hide and hide.”

“We’ve got a big undocumented segment of our Filipino community,” Ortega said. “But we don’t talk about that because that’s essentially sort of outing our family members and community members. But I do get a sense though that there’s a fear and concern about the impending administration.”

In September, just over a year after the fire, an undocumented immigrant was detained by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Lahaina, Honolulu Civil Beat reported. Roots Reborn confirmed it was one of their clients but declined to share additional information. 

Patrie told the Hawai‘i Journalism Initiative that she represented the client who was picked up in an ICE raid and placed in a detention facility in Honolulu. She also said she was unable to share more details but that the arrest spooked the community.

“We were very surprised to see that they came to Lahaina after the fire,” Patrie said. “It had a huge impact on the community and really set back recovery efforts, because Roots and others have been working so hard since the fire to get immigrants to come forward and accept services.”

Veronica Mendoza, co-founder and executive director of Roots Reborn, said the nonprofit has been trying to build trust within the community. The nonprofit has 12 staff members — five are from Lahaina, including three who lost their homes. 

“Our folks are experiencing a lot of fear, and that’s the biggest obstacles to accessing resources,” Mendoza said. “Our staff … comes from the community itself. So we already have this built-in level of trust with them. There is cultural competency there, we know how to listen and speak and body language and all those things. … Because ultimately, what we want is to ensure they are being taken care of.”

Ortega, who lives on O’ahu and is fluent in Ilokano (one of the most commonly spoken languages of the Philippines) was called in by Roots Reborn to provide translation services. People were overwhelmed, and the federal system didn’t take into account the multigenerational households that many had lived in prior to the fire. This increased their household income bracket and made them ineligible for some assistance.

“It’s so expensive to live here, and we do have to pool resources together in order to survive here,” said Ortega, who was born in the Philippines and moved to Hawai‘i when she was 10. “And when we do do that, then it’s like, we’re ineligible for this?”

Both ICE and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are under the Department of Homeland Security, adding another layer of worry for a wary community.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

A FEMA spokesperson told HJI that the agency “is committed to reducing the barriers people face when accessing our recovery programs, while also ensuring that all disaster survivors receive the assistance for which they qualify for under the law.” The spokesperson pointed out that mixed-status families can still apply for aid if one family member is a citizen, and immigrants who don’t qualify for government assistance are still eligible for aid from community groups.

Community groups like Tagnawa and Roots Reborn have been at the forefront of reaching out to immigrants and measuring the impacts on their communities.

Roots Reborn surveyed 609 people in the community after the fire, including 512 who identified as Hispanic or Latino. Most of the 433 households represented in the survey said they had been renters at the time of the fire (420), and that their rent had gone up from a median of $1,650 pre-fire to $2,000 afterwards, which essentially took the entirety of the median $2,000 monthly income. The majority of people (435 individuals) had one job, but most did not have health or dental insurance.

Tagnawa and the Hawai’i Workers Center surveyed 757 Filipino fire survivors and found that the greatest need after the fire was financial aid (94.7%), followed by food (56.8%), housing (49.7%), household goods (40.7%) and water (38.2%). About 68% said they lived in multigenerational homes before the fire and were now worried about child care and aging family members after the fire forced them to separate. Roughly one-third said they experienced stress and trauma-related symptoms, but only 6% expressed the need for mental health services.

‘WE ARE JUST WAITING FOR WHAT HE SAYS’

When Yolanda thinks of the fire on Aug. 8, 2023, her mind drifts back to the smoke — how dark the sky was as she and her family evacuated their Lahaina home and set out on foot after police blocked off the roads and their cars couldn’t get through. She remembers the sound of her granddaughter crying and the sweater she grabbed to cover herself from the ash and smoke.

“It was like a nightmare, horrible,” Yolanda, who has a green card but asked that only her first name be used to protect her family’s safety, said in an interview in Spanish. “I don’t think we’ll ever forget it.”

Yolanda’s home survived, though another relative’s house did not. Several members of her family also lost their jobs. She’s a woman of faith and believes everything happens for a reason. Her family, she said, grew closer and more mature through the ordeal. But it’s hard for her to explain why so many people died. 

Maui has been Yolanda’s home for more than two decades, and she’s happy here. But lately she’s been listening to the things that President-elect Trump is planning to do, and she’s grown worried for people in the community. So, she’s doing the only thing she knows how to do in tough times. 

“I take refuge in God,” Yolanda said. “God takes control of that. I can’t. I ask God to take care of my children, and I leave everything in his hands.”

Other immigrants in the community also had a sense of apprehension but acceptance that there was little they could do about the future. 

Jose, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, lost his home and two friends in the Lahaina fire. He remembers vividly the burning sensation in the air and called it the most terrible thing he’d ever seen in his life. He moved to another part of the island and said he’s lost roughly half the maintenance work he did before the fire.  

“We work hard here, but we respect (the president’s) decision, what he says,” Jose said in an interview in Spanish. “We are just waiting for what he says, because really, we are unfortunately in a situation where we are illegal. … We can’t do anything else. Maybe as people we have some rights here in this country, but if they have the last word to deport us, we can’t do anything.” 

Even immigrants with legal status like Laborte are worried, given that Trump tried to end DACA during his first term before the U.S. Supreme Court forced the administration to restore it. Laborte had to get special permission to return to Mexico, and even then she left her young son with family on Maui just in case she wasn’t allowed to reenter the country.

Laborte was 5 years old when her family came to Maui to start a new life after losing everything in flash flooding in Chiapas in the late 1990s. In August 2023, they lost everything again when the wildfire destroyed their home. After the fire, Laborte joined Roots Reborn as Patrie’s legal assistant. She recently landed a scholarship with a Department of Justice program that will put her on track to become an immigration lawyer.

She says she wishes people understood that immigrant families like hers came in search of a better life and that they’re not trying to drain the system — in fact, undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes every year but are not eligible for public benefits like U.S. citizens are.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, the offices of Maui Economic Opportunity were packed as dozens of people waited to meet with Mexican Consulate officials who were visiting Maui for the weekend. 

MEO Community Services Director Cassi Yamashita and Enlace Hispano Program Coordinator Sharon Shough said clients have been asking for help getting their documents in order before the new administration takes office. Some are trying to get dual citizenship for their children, while others are seeking help with power of attorneys in case they are separated from their families. 

“Just the unknown is scary, and it’s honestly not only with the immigrants or undocumented individuals — it’s people who are supporting or helping this community as well,” Yamashita said. “They’re fearful of being targeted as well.”

Shough urged residents to keep tabs on the news and to make sure they have ways to contact family members in both the U.S. and their home countries.

“We don’t know for sure what’s going to happen,” Shough said. “We’re prepared for the worst, hoping for the better and the best.”

Shough said the likelihood of Trump’s plans becoming reality “all depends on how the police responds to this,” as the president-elect has said he would use local police forces to help carry out deportations.

Kevin Block, a longtime immigration attorney on Maui and one of the founders of Roots Reborn, said that even though the plans are aimed at those who’ve committed crimes, he’s worried that mass deportations without due process could sweep up U.S. citizens the way one operation did in the 1950s.

“The whole thing should scare everybody, regardless of what your political affiliations are, even your feelings about immigration,” Block said. “Everyone’s civic rights will be violated if we need to show our papers and prove our citizenship. And if they’re not going to make everybody show their papers, then how are they going to pick the ones that they ask to show their papers? They’re going to have to racially profile people.” 

Earlier this month, Roots Reborn hosted a “know your rights” training for immigrants on Maui.

The four main constitutional amendments that Roots Reborn teaches people are the Fourth Amendment, which gives the person a right to refuse a search unless the person has a warrant signed by a judge, which is different from an ICE warrant, Patrie explained.

They also tell people about the Fifth Amendment, which gives a person the right to remain silent; the Sixth Amendment, which gives a person the right to legal counsel; and the Eighth Amendment, which protects a person from “cruel and unusual punishment” if they are detained.

“Most people don’t know that just because you’re undocumented or you’re an immigrant, does not mean that the constitutional rights don’t apply to you,” Patrie said. 

Roots Reborn said it’s been working to establish a good relationship with the Maui Police Department. The nonprofit doesn’t want immigrants in the community to be afraid of reporting crimes or going to the police if they need help. 

MPD officials were not made available for an interview, but spokesperson Alana Pico issued a statement via email saying “our mission is to serve and protect all community members, regardless of their immigration status.”

The statement continued: “We value the diverse makeup of our community and the relationships we have established with local immigrant advocates, leaders, and organizations. Our approach prioritizes building trust and collaboration with all residents to ensure safety and security for everyone. Should federal administration policies or procedures shift or adjust, the Maui Police Department will remain dedicated to its role as a local law enforcement agency focused on addressing crime and public safety.”

The Maui Police Department is “committed to upholding the constitutional rights of every individual, ensuring that our enforcement actions are impartial and equitable,” the statement added.

Despite the struggles to recover from the fire and the worries over the upcoming administration, Block says it’s not all doom and gloom.

“It is a dark time, but the immigrant community is not paralyzed by fear,” he said.

He said the community is resilient and felt that Hawai’i could weather the storm.

“If anybody finds a way to navigate through the rough waters ahead, it’s going to be us,” Block said. “I’m super hopeful that the core principles of kapu aloha and just the sort of immigrant nature of our history … and the fact that we do feel like we’re not part of the continent gives me the most hope. I’d rather be here trying to figure this out than anyplace else.”