KAILUA-KONA — The knock the Ellis family dreaded for months and hoped never to hear arrived at their Waimea home Thursday afternoon.
What awaited on the other side of the front door wasn’t entirely unexpected, but the life-changing immediacy of it was.
Three men in plain clothes and unmarked vehicles — two U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents and one local police officer — asked to speak with Graham Ellis, the patriarch of the family, alone.
Dena Ellis, Graham’s wife and an American citizen, watched from a distance.
After a few minutes of conversation, Graham, a 67-year-old British national and undocumented immigrant who has made his home on Hawaii Island for the last 36 years, agreed to fly to Oahu the next day and turn himself in to the Enforcement and Removal Operations Field Office in Honolulu.
His deportation proceedings would then begin.
One of the DHS officers — all of whom Dena stressed have been cordial and treated her and Graham impeccably over the last several days — pulled Dena aside and made an unsolicited comment that wasn’t an answer to any question asked.
“This isn’t because of Trump,” he said.
An acceleration of events
After President Donald Trump took office and made his stringent immigration priorities official, Graham and Dena sat down and braced for a difficult discussion.
“Graham understood there was the possibility someone could come at any time and he was suddenly feeling unsafe,” Dena said. “We came to the decision it would be best for him to move back to England. He was planning to leave in September.”
They wanted a buffer of several months before Graham’s intended departure date to allow him time to settle his affairs across the island and to spend one more summer together as a family.
Though they have no children together, Dena’s four kids live with them in Waimea and one of Graham’s daughters is set to arrive Wednesday from Texas for a long summer stay.
They are a family of circus performers and had plans for a trip to Kauai to entertain and educate children in summer programs through the circus arts. It’s a value and a practice Graham has been passionate about his entire life, and a passion he’s passed on to his stepchildren.
Graham was also set to administer his final two-week, superhero-themed circus camp in July, a longstanding tradition he intended to wind down after this year.
He chose it as his last even before DHS came knocking for two reasons — because he knew he was on his way back to England and because he’s suffering from leukemia, a form of blood cancer. He was diagnosed in April of 2016.
All the family’s plans were scrapped Friday, however, when they received disconcerting news. Graham’s deportation was to be expedited.
He has been a resident of the federal detention center in Honolulu since that time.
The legal process
Graham expected he’d be afforded the typical grace period for those who agree to voluntarily depart, and his attorney Kevin Block, an immigration lawyer with offices on Maui and Hawaii Island, said under previous administrations that likely would have been true.
“Typically they would let him stay longer, but this is a different time,” Block said.
There is considerable confusion over the terminology used to describe undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Often, they are referred to as “illegals,” but that implies they have committed a crime. Based on federal law, however, Graham’s presence in Hawaii is not a crime.
Those who enter the country without going through the appropriate immigration channels are guilty of a misdemeanor that can subject them to fines and a six-month prison term.
But Graham last entered the U.S. under the visa waiver program in 2002. By staying in the country for a longer period than the program allotted, Graham has committed a civil offense, not a criminal one, and thus is not being charged with any crimes.
The visa waiver program allows for citizens of 19 countries with which the U.S. has good relations to forego the visa process, which is more lengthy and bureaucratic.
However, by entering into the program, those immigrants waive their rights to due process. Because of that, Graham is not legally entitled to an extended period of residence in the country to get his affairs in order. It was a revelation that took he and Dena by surprise Friday.
“It was all just so very sudden and upsetting to us,” Dena said, her voice welling up with tears. “This is very traumatic for our entire family to have him ripped away like this. We’re just asking for a little time, just a few more days together. When Trump says he’s going to make America great again, how does ripping families apart do that?”
Dena’s 14-year-old daughter Bailey is dealing with a mix of anger and confusion at what she sees as an injustice imposed on her family by her country.
“I never thought that I would be at home and people would come into my house saying they want to take a part of my family away from me,” she said. “To me that is so appalling.”
Graham never applied for lawful permanent residence despite being married to an American citizen due to legal barriers arising from circumstances that occurred more than 30 years ago, which has played a role in events unfolding as they have in recent days.
Block’s hope is to earn leniency for Graham after a scheduled hearing today in front of a federal immigration judge, despite there being no statutory right to ask for an extended stay prior to deportation. The decision will fall to the director of the ERO field office.
He added if the director does grant the request, a negotiation will ensue and Graham will likely receive between four and six weeks to wrap up his life in Hawaii. The worst-case scenario could see him boarding the next available flight to England following his hearing.
“Trump famously said he wants to go after the ‘bad hombres,’ but really the effect is that everybody who is here who gets discovered can now be deported,” Block said.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Public Affairs Officer Lori Haley wrote in an email to WHT that “…while criminal aliens and those who pose a threat to public safety will continue to be a focus, DHS will NOT exempt classes or categories of removable aliens from potential enforcement.”
But Block isn’t asking for an exemption.
“What we’re asking for is the reasonable consideration that a person has the time to wind down their affairs, tie up loose ends and voluntarily depart,” Block said.
Whether Graham will ever be able to return to the U.S. is in question. Block said in cases like his, the bar is typically set at 10 years before someone can re-apply for legal entry into the country.
Dena said that leaves her and Graham in a logistical hell of trying to figure out how to make their family work situated half a world apart.
Community reaction
Graham has spent his life on Hawaii Island, much of it in Puna, helping children in poor and disaffected communities find voice and passion through circus arts.
He has served on the Puna Community Council, was the founding president of the Kalapana Seaview Estates Community Association and started the HICCUP circus for at-risk youth, which more than 100 times performed an anti-drug show called “Naturally High” encouraging kids to get involved with community service.
Among several other endeavors, Graham also helped Hawaii’s Volcano Circus and other nonprofits raise over $500,000 as a grant writer. He founded the Bellyacres, what former Gov. Neil Abercrombie described as an “artistic eco-village” that spreads messages of sustainable living and led to the creation of the Seaview Performing Center for Education, or S.P.A.C.E.
For his efforts, Graham has been recognized by several politicians and community leaders at the local, state and federal level.
“What Graham has done is a remarkable feat that needs to be replicated around the world,” said Mark Cantwell, an environmental expert and a senior policy adviser for the federal government of Canada. “For that reason, he is a personal hero of mine for his patience and kindness and commitment over a lifetime.”
Monnya Silver Crippen, a professional circus performer and stunt woman, first met Graham in 2004 when she was 18 years old. She has visited Hawaii several times a year since to take part performances with him.
“He’s just been really ahead of his time in terms of things affecting the earth and local communities,” she said. “Those shows taught me the impact of what arts and circus can have on people’s lives. They’ve shaped me as an artist and a person more than anything else I’ve ever done.”
Mark Glick, Hawaii’s energy administrator and leader of the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative from 2011-2016, now heads energy and innovation as a professor in the Hawaii Natural Energy Institution at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
He spent several years prior to those endeavors working with Graham writing grant proposals.
“It frankly wasn’t surprising under this administration that someone like Graham would be one of those people unfortunately affected,” Glick said. “Knowing how well he’s served the community over the last 15 years I’ve known him, it’s somewhat tragic … and clearly this isn’t in the public interest.”
And Sen. Russell Rudermann, who represents Puna and Ka’u, said if the ultimate goal of revised immigration policies is to get rid of the bad guys, they’ve missed the mark entirely in this case.
“I introduced him once and said, ‘Graham is a better American citizen than pretty much anybody else I know in our community,’” Rudermann said. “Which is ironic, because he’s not an American citizen. It’s terrible that this should happen to him.”