News of armored vehicles arriving at Kauaʻi’s primary commercial port sprang up first on the coconut wireless, quickly setting off a social media firestorm. Amid the Trump administration’s more aggressive efforts to crack down on illegal immigration, ICE raid rumors swirled.

In a Nov. 2 Facebook post, County Council member Fern Holland urged caution and calm.

“It’s important that we stay maka‘ala and watch out for our community and each other,” she said. “It’s also important to allow federal agents to conduct law enforcement operations safely and without disruption. We do not yet know the nature of this enforcement.”

On Nov. 5 – a month ago – a noise Holland likened to the whop-whop-whop of a low-flying helicopter jolted her awake in her rural Kapahi home. She got up and peered out the front window louvers. 

Silhouettes of dozens of law enforcement agents illuminated by a near-full moon filed into the street. It was like a movie. Federal agents shouted instructions in English and Spanish, telling people inside the house across the street to come out with their hands up. 

It was 4 a.m. Holland yanked on a dress, put on a pot of coffee and went outside with a mug in hand to introduce herself to some of the agents. Then she stood in her yard and watched the federal operation unfold. 

The target of the raid was a 14-bedroom home on Kaapuni Road. The property provided workforce housing for Hawaii Care and Cleaning, a Līhuʻe-based cleaning contractor that also operates on Oʻahu and Maui. 

Residents in the neighborhood 20 minutes north of Līhuʻe Airport had become familiar with the transient workers who rotated in and out of the house, relying on a large white van to transport them to and from work at hotels and resorts. It wasn’t the first time the janitorial service had come under federal scrutiny for its labor practices either.

Long before dawn that Friday morning, Holland overheard agents talking about people who had barricaded themselves inside the house. Soon, she heard what she said sounded like doors being knocked in. By the end of the raid, Holland estimated 15 people had been handcuffed and detained, all before daylight. 

Holland recounted the law enforcement operation in detail on her social media accounts. She said the family of one of the men detained later contacted her trying to get more information.

“I think the federal shutdown has made it more hard than usual for there to be any response … from a fairly unresponsive area of our government so it’s been very difficult and I’ve tried to connect people where I can,” she said. 

More Questions Than Answers

The Nov. 5 raids brought federal agents to rural Kauaʻi neighborhoods, where Hawaii Care and Cleaning owns and operates employee housing. All told, 44 people were detained across six residential properties in Kapahi and Kalāheo. The company’s Līhuʻe office was also a target. 

Weeks later, confusion and fear lingers and the Kauaʻi community remains on edge. Authorities have released few details about the operation, other than to confirm the arrests of 44 people, including two suspected associates of the foreign terrorist organization Tren de Aragua.

The executive director of Hawaiʻi Coalition For Immigrant Rights, Liza Ryan-Gill, said the community still has more questions than answers. 

“The details do matter,” she said. “It’s always tempting to think about people in the sense of are they legal or are they illegal. First of all, I don’t believe in those labels. But also those statuses change all the time and it’s extremely gray. They had a protected status that was revoked by the federal government.” 

All those arrested were from Venezuela, said Gary Singh, an immigration attorney hired by the cleaning company’s owner to represent the detainees if they wanted to file an asylum claim. None chose to, Singh said, which he attributed to the hostile political climate facing immigrants under the Trump administration.

“None of them wanted to stay,” he said. “The process is, if they do want to pursue (asylum), they’re going to be stuck here for anywhere between six and nine months sitting in jail. Nobody wants to do that.”

He said the detainees have all been flown out of Hawaiʻi, some to mainland detention centers to await deportation.

The Trump administration’s termination of a Biden-era program that allowed people from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti to stay in the United States for up to two years has removed deportation protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants. After Temporary Protected Status was rescinded in October, federal authorities have pursued the rapid removal of people who had previously been covered by the program.

‘The Town Janitor’

Hawaii Care & Cleaning is owned by William Allen, a business entrepreneur who also offers global seminars that help people achieve “personal and business breakthroughs.”

On his website MrBillHawaii.com, Allen describes himself as a “street kid-turned-successful entrepreneur, thought leader, philanthropist” and said he founded his Hawaiʻi cleaning company about four decades ago at age 18. The company has more than 1,000 employees statewide, according to Allen’s website, and its “statewide list of clients reads like a ‘Who’s Who’ of the most successful businesses and Fortune 500 Companies in Hawaii.”

He owns a number of other companies, including the luxury vacation rental business Kauaʻi Exclusive Management and Realty, the cleaning chemical and supplies manufacturer Ultimate Solutions and the carpet cleaning manufacturer Sandia Products.

Both his cleaning and vacation rental companies appear among the Kauaʻi Chamber of Commerce’s business listings.

“In spite of this success,” Allen’s website states, “Bill still considers himself the ‘town janitor.’”  

In January, Hawaii Care and Cleaning, Inc. and Alacrity Employment Services settled a $3.85 million lawsuit after the U.S. Department of Labor found the Kauaʻi companies deliberately withheld overtime from hundreds of employees and falsified pay records to mask the labor law violations. 

Most of the money will be used to pay back swindled workers. The 44 workers arrested Nov. 5 on Kauaʻi had all joined the company after that settlement, Singh said.

A federal investigation found the cleaning contractor and staffing agency worked in tandem to misclassify housekeeping and janitorial employees as independent contractors, manipulate payroll records to underreport the number of hours employees actually worked and withhold payment for overtime. 

The settlement included nearly $2 million in back wages owed to 1,133 Kauaʻi workers. The companies were also directed to pay a $50,000 civil penalty. 

Many hotels outsource cleaning jobs to contracting companies or third-party staffing agencies. Allen had his hand in both. 

The investigation revealed that Allen directed Amy Galtes to start and operate Alacrity Employment Services to provide labor to Hawaii Care and Cleaning, Inc. The Kilauea staffing agency is no longer in business.

Federal investigators found violations as far back as March 2021. Some of the workers had been hired by the staffing agency and others worked directly for Hawaii Care and Cleaning. Some worked for both of them. 

It’s unclear whether the ICE raids and the settlement are related. Jeffrey Harris, an attorney for Allen and Galtes in last year’s Department of Labor case, declined to comment. Hawaii Care and Cleaning did not respond to requests for an interview.

The cleaning company has been embroiled in other labor disputes. In 2017, the business paid more than $1.1 million in owed wages to dozens of workers contracted to clean Waikīkī’s Hilton Hawaiian Village. 

The money settled a grievance filed in 2015 by UNITE HERE Local 5, the hotel workers union, that claimed non-union workers contracted through Hawaii Care and Cleaning should be paid the same as union employees. 

Angelina Spence, a Local 5 spokeswoman, did not respond to requests for comment.

Asked for comment this week, including about whether Allen could face any legal action, Erin Musso, a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, a division of ICE, said: “As a matter of policy, HSI does not disclose specifics regarding planned enforcement operations to the public to preserve the integrity of active investigations.”

On the internet, however, people commenting on the raid had opinions on that topic.

“Will the owner of Hawaii Care and Cleaning, Bill Allen, be held accountable for bringing these people to Kaua’i?” one wrote in response to The Garden Island’s Nov. 7 story. “This kind of behavior — exploiting people for your personal financial gain — as evidenced by his previous reimbursement of almost $4 million — money that was withheld from employees’ pay — obviously has not changed. And Mr Allen needs to make amends.”

Contributing: Civil Beat reporter Jeremy Hay

Civil Beat’s reporting on economic inequality is supported by the Hawaiʻi Community Foundation as part of its work to build equity for all through the CHANGE Framework; and by the Cooke Foundation.