The Guam Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is hosting a series of virtual public meetings to investigate “The Over-Representation of COFA Migrants Within Guam’s Criminal Justice System.” The first briefing convened recently with testimony from various stakeholders. 

Dr. Ansito Walter, UOG professor of public administration, told KUAM News, "I feel embarrassed and really mad at these young men. Because this is not depicting the true picture of who we are as people from the region." Are Compact of Free Association migrants overrepresented in Guam’s criminal justice system? And what are the underlying factors? 

That’s what the committee is investigating with a series of meetings, hearing testimony from various stakeholders.  Dr. Walter, who is also the former governor of Chuuk, shared how even he still gets nervous when walking into a government building.  

"I’m scared," he admitted. "I don’t even want to go in there. Just imagine, here I am, I’ve been in the United States since 1972 and I’m still nervous. What would you [that mean] for those other people that don’t speak your language?"

The cultural and language barrier is just one example of the challenges Freely Associated Citizens face when they make the move to Guam for better opportunities. 

Public Defender Service Corporation executive director Stephen Hattori pointed out other hurdles, like discriminatory policies, sharing, "Obviously, the COFA deportation initiative created by the attorney general, the billboard earlier, that’s clearly a discriminatory practice. Media, that’s another issue, especially social media. There’s a lot of gaslighting of our brothers, especially on social media."

But despite the social perception, he says data shows the number of cases with COFA migrants is dropping. "The number of cases and individuals is dropping in terms of the number of FSM or Chuukese clients that we’re getting is dropping. Like in 2013, numerically there were like 327 Chuukese clients. Last year, there were 182," said Hattori.

Josie Howard, founder and CEO of We Are Oceania, a Hawaii non-profit organization that serves and empowers the Aloha State's Micronesian community, says the complex issue needs to be looked through a cultural lens. "I think in our culture, we don’t have poverty. We live off the land and we live off the family because the family supports each other," she said.

"We may be poor and we don’t have a house or the ideal living way, but we are happy and we live off the land. And when we’re in modern society then you have a different lifestyle that you have to abide by, then you become victims because you don’t have the means. So then you have to do what you have to do to survive. It’s all about survival."

The committee will continue to engage in critical dialogue open virtually to the public.