Two days after she was awakened by armed federal immigration agents pounding at her door, a Maui teacher said she remained too frightened to be identified publicly — despite being a natural-born U.S. citizen. 

The educator, who shares a Kahului home with approximately 10 Hawaiʻi public school teachers from the Philippines who hold legal work visas, spoke with reporters with her camera turned off during a video conference Thursday organized by the state teacher’s union to highlight the fears rippling through the school system.

“There was people crying, there was people shaking,” said the teacher, who told reporters that she and her fellow teachers were detained and questioned outside their home for nearly an hour on Tuesday. “They were not even properly dressed, half of them.”

Though none of the teachers were the targets of Tuesday’s dramatic early morning raid, the union is concerned the incident could have a chilling effect on the state’s ongoing efforts to recruit foreign teachers.

At 6:15 a.m. on Tuesday, the Maui teachers woke to Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents pounding at their door, rushing through their home with guns and herding them onto the street. For nearly an hour, the agents held teachers outside the multi-family home and denied their repeated requests to show their passports and visa documents, the teacher said.

She said she was eventually allowed into the house to retrieve her passport, but by then the raid was nearly over. She and the teachers from the Philippines remain shaken and overwhelmed by the incident, she added.

While ICE agents said they were looking for a convicted felon who previously lived in the house, she said they didn’t produce a warrant until after they searched the property.

The raid ended with no arrests, although Homeland Security Investigations said in a press release that ICE had arrested 50 individuals on Oʻahu, Maui and Big Island since Monday.

Union leaders said frequent immigration crackdowns under the Trump administration could deter international workers from coming to Hawaiʻi schools. The state has long faced a chronic teacher shortage, and teachers from the Philippines have played a key role in filling schools with qualified workers.

“We need to get every teacher we can to fill every single classroom,” said union president Osa Tui Jr.

Foreign Teachers Fill Important Role

Since 2019, the Hawaiʻi Department of Education has used the J-1 visa program to hire educators from other countries and allow them to teach in the state for up to five years.

DOE currently employs 208 J-1 teachers and it hired more than 120 educators from the Philippines this year, according to communications director Nanea Ching. Statewide, Hawaiʻi had 2,580 J-1 visa holders in 2023, according to the Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism.

Some principals have credited the visa program specifically for contributing to Hawaiʻi’s declining number of teacher vacancies. This year, schools started with 166 unfilled teacher jobs, compared to more than 1,000 vacant positions in August 2022. 

DOE has also touted the program as a way to address the underrepresentation of Filipino teachers in Hawaiʻi schools. Nearly a quarter of Hawaiʻi public school students are Filipino, compared to only 7% of educators. 

“Presently, the State’s implementation of the J-1 visa program has aimed to expose Filipino children to Filipino educators, inspiring them to consider careers in education,” lawmakers wrote in a bill this year that would have created an international teacher license for J-1 teachers. 

The bill failed to pass but received more than 350 pages of support from teachers and administrators who said the visa program has played a key role in addressing staff shortages and supporting students. 

“These educators come with graduate-level expertise in their subject areas and possess exceptional teaching skills,” said Kauaʻi High School Principal Marlene Leary in written testimony supporting the bill. “Moreover, they have demonstrated a genuine willingness to embrace Hawaiʻi culture and engage fully with our school’s initiatives and community.”

The state still faces a teacher shortage, however, and Ching said DOE plans to hire an additional 125 teachers through the J-1 visa program next year. Some fear raids like the one earlier this week could work against those efforts.

“This is definitely something that is not going to help,” Tui said during Thursday’s press conference. “We’re very worried that might happen again.”

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.