stock here: shame on the “re-made” Zuckerberg, Zionist prick.
On a different matter, I have 2 computers in which now the mouse has an annoying scrolling when you don’t want to scroll behavior.
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.
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Lahaina immigrants who survived fire now wary of Trump’s deportation threats
By Colleen Uechi
December 23, 2024 · 12:06 AM GMT+6
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At the memorial for the 102 people who died in the August 2023 wildfire, flags represent the many ethnicities that made up the Lahaina community. Census data show one-third of Lahaina’s roughly 12,000 residents were immigrants. HJI / COLLEEN UECHI photo
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.
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“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.”