Legal director of ACLU-Hawaii steps up as immigration becomes a hot issue

Mateo Caballero, legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, is watching the national debate over immigration and refugees with more than academic interest.

Born in Colombia and raised in Venezuela, Caballero was a high school graduate when he emigrated to the U.S. with his mother; his father has died. While they both are now citizens, there are family members he would be concerned about crossing borders, given the current climate under the Trump administration.

The ACLU has been in the thick of the issue, he said. Although nobody reportedly was detained at Honolulu’s airport, he said, Freedom of Information Act inquiries have been sent to get full details.

Caballero, who started in his post in September, is a graduate of Harvard Law School. He worked at a private firm in Washington, D.C., and was a bankruptcy court clerk in New York before moving to Hawaii in 2013.

While in D.C., he worked on a team representing detainees in Guantanamo Bay’s controversial detention camp.

Then and now, the argument is made that constitutional protections are only for U.S. citizens. But his experience tells him otherwise.

“Those same arguments were already made against Guantanamo detainees,” he said. “Those arguments were rejected.

“You have, both as a citizen and a noncitizen of the United States, rights.”

QUESTION: What kind of requests for legal help most typically come into the office? What is the caseload like there?

ANSWER: We receive all kinds of requests for legal assistance, from activists asking about their rights to organize a protest at an airport, to immigrants who have been denied services or language access because of their national origin. The most typical intake, however, comes from inmates, whose rights to humane shelter, adequate health care, mail, marriage and due process are constantly under threat.

We are a small office with only two full-time litigation attorneys and must be very selective about the cases that we decide to litigate in court. Consequently, we always strive to resolve matters without litigation through demand letters, settlement discussions and the legislative process.

Q: What are the biggest fault lines you see in the way government handles homelessness?

A: We are hopeful that Hawaii is at a turning point on the way the government treats families and individuals without a permanent home.

For a while the government’s instinct was to criminalize homelessness, making it illegal to sit and lie on sidewalks, sleep in parks, store personal property in public places, and defecate and urinate in public. This approach was not only potentially unconstitutional, as it punishes families and individuals merely for being poor, but also made an already marginalized population an easy target for the government overstepping its authority. Unsurprisingly, the criminalization of homelessness has not worked.

Instead of targeting the consequences of homelessness, the government needs to find solutions to its root causes. The role of the ACLU is that the government respect the Constitution in the process.

Q: How would you characterize the problem of prison and jail conditions? Could a new jail alleviate the problem?

A: The conditions in Hawaii’s correctional facilities are inhumane and shameful. Of the nine correctional facilities owned and operated by the state, seven are overcrowded in that their actual inmate count exceeds design bed capacity.

While it is difficult to compare correctional systems, we know that between 2001 and 2013, Hawaii was tied fifth for the highest average suicide rate per 100,000 prisoners in the United States. Since 1984, the state has also been sued multiple times over its prison and jail conditions.

Despite the shame, expense and lawsuits, after the oversight ended, the same violations have come back in full force —leading to the filing of the ACLU’s latest complaint with the Department of Justice earlier this year.

Simply building a bigger correctional center would not necessarily solve the problem of overcrowding in Hawaii. … Before the state can even consider plans to build a new jail, it is imperative that we reform the failed policies that drive overcrowding and determine what size of facilities will actually be necessary.

Finally, without adequate treatment and rehabilitation programs, a bigger facility will not meaningfully address the problem of overcrowding in Hawaii’s correctional facilities, either.

Q: What do you say to critics who think there’s too much concern for the homeless, prisoners and others on the margins, that they have personal responsibility for their status?

A: Treating the homeless and prisoners in a humane and constitutional manner is not only the right thing to do, but it is also the more effective and common-sense thing to do. Making criminals out of the homeless makes it more likely — almost certain — that the homeless will remain without a permanent home.

Treating inmates inhumanely while in prison also makes it more likely that they will come out as dangerous criminals.

Q: What is the particular concern the ACLU has with voting rights?

A: Fortunately, Hawaii does not have the same type of voting supression issues that we have seen in the rest of the country. That being said, we have been working on three areas concerning voting rights in Hawaii.

First, we have been working to ensure that the state of Hawaii complies with federal standards for registering to vote for an election.

Second, Hawaii currently purges voter rolls based on a statute similar to the one found unconstitutional last year. … Thus, the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project is currently investigating how this and other similar statutes are being applied nationwide.

Third, we are also monitoring voting reform bills pending at the Legislature to make sure they appropriately address privacy and other constitutional concerns.

Q: What are the top legislative issues you are following this session?

A: This legislative session, the ACLU of Hawaii is looking to support evidence-based criminal justice reform. The crime rate in Hawaii is at a historic low and yet our incarceration rates remain very high.

Before the state draws new and expensive plans for jails and prisons, lawmakers must look to common- sense reforms aimed at reducing the incarceration of low-level offenders, including pretrial detainees who simply cannot afford bail.

Our current system results in the state paying about a $140 per day to jail one person whose bail is set at only $100. It makes no sense.

Simple reforms like a no-cash bail system, sentencing reform, drug reform, and the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program have been sweeping the nation and could save the state millions of dollars, all of which could be reinvested in treatment and rehabilitation.

The ACLU of Hawaii also supports police reform measures such as Senate Bill 421, which enacts comprehensive policies for the implementation and use of police body-worn cameras. With good policies in place, police body cameras are a game-changing tool for police transparency.

We hope to replicate our approach to body cameras as a legislatively regulated technology with other surveillance technologies so that it is communities, and not the police, who decide whether and how new technologies are adopted and used in each county.

Finally, the ACLU also strongly supports SB 502, which fixes a discriminatory provision in Hawaii’s mandate that health insurance providers cover one lifetime benefit for in vitro fertilization.

Under the current state mandate, health insurance providers are only required to cover IVF for heterosexual married couples who do not require donor sperm or eggs or the services of a surrogate.

The state should not be in the business of favoring some families over others, and SB 502 ensures that all people looking to conceive are treated with the same dignity and respect as everyone else.