‘I heard her screaming’: Rapid deportation case may signal change of pace in Alaska immigration proceedings

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - A Mexican woman and her three children were taken into custody by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in Soldotna Tuesday morning, and by Wednesday afternoon, the mother and two minors were in Tijuana, Mexico while her 18-year-old son remains in custody of Alaska’s Department of Corrections, according to Alaska immigration attorney Lara Nations.

Sonia Espinoza Arriaga, a Mexican national who recently married Alexander Sanchez-Ramos, a U.S. citizen, spoke with Alaska’s News Source by phone Wednesday evening from a transit station in Tijuana with her 5-year-old and 16-year-old children who were deported with her.

“I don’t have any idea when I’ll see them again,” Sanchez-Ramos said, “unless I go that way.”

Sanchez-Ramos says he was aware of a missed immigration court appearance by his wife in January due to a misinterpretation of the timing of the appointment.

Regardless of the deportation notice that followed, he says he didn’t expect his family to be arrested, separated and deported in less than two days. Sanchez-Ramos says the family had paid an attorney who was working to reopen the case within the 90-day period allowed.

A statement was released on Monday, Feb. 23, about the arrest.

An ICE spokesperson said Arriaga and her children were issued a “final order of removal” on Jan. 13 after she failed to show up for an immigration court hearing. They said ICE agents found and arrested Arriaga in a “targeted vehicle stop” in Soldotna on Feb. 17.

“Espinoza is now facing the consequences of making the decision to not follow that lawful order to report to ICE,” the spokesperson stated.

The spokesperson added that Arriaga requested that ICE agents keep the family together and bring them in to the Anchorage office together.

“At no time were the children separated from their mother while in ICE custody,” the spokesperson stated.

However, in interviews last week and on Monday, Sonia Arriaga said her older two sons, Cristopher and Alexis, were separated from her for some time while at the Anchorage Immigration Office.

Cristopher said in interviews last week and Monday that while they were separated for about 35 minutes, the two signed paperwork and were fingerprinted.

The ICE spokesperson said that while 18-year-old Alexis was processed as an adult, he was able to stay with the family until he was moved to a detention facility.

“ICE does NOT separate families,” the statement read. “Parents are given a choice to either take their minor children with them or place them in the care of someone they designate. This is consistent with past administration’s immigration enforcement.”

ICE arrest in Soldotna

Sanchez-Ramos was outside having a cigarette when he heard his wife screaming and saw agents “yanking her out of the vehicle” after dropping one of the kids off at school, he said.

“I see about anywhere from five to seven vehicles, all tinted windows, pull up and just block the entire entrance of the yard,” he said.

When Sanchez-Ramos approached to help, he says agents surrounded him and initially placed him in handcuffs, saying it was for the safety of the agents. He says no warrant was shown.

The children, Alexis and Matias, were sleeping at a home on the property, along with his sister, when agents arrived. Sanchez-Ramos’s sister was instructed to emerge from the house first.

“They had their guns out and pointed in her direction,” he said. “Said, ‘Let me see your hands.’”

Agents then placed 18-year-old Alexis in handcuffs and separated him from his younger brother. The 5-year-old began screaming, according to Ramos-Sanchez. After pleading with them to keep the children together, he says agents removed Alexis’s handcuffs and allowed Matias to rejoin his older brother.

Sanchez-Ramos says agents encouraged him to go pick up 16-year-old Cristopher from Soldotna High School to avoid “a big scene for, for them”, he said.

He was told to meet the agents back at the trooper station in Soldotna, Sanchez-Ramos said, and was told the family would be taken to an immigration office in Anchorage and later to a hotel for a few days while legal matters were handled.

“They said, ‘Yes, they’re going to be all together,’” he recalled. “We don’t want to separate them.”

He was given an opportunity to pack a small duffel bag with changes of clothes for Sonia and the children and any legal paperwork that might be needed by the family once in Anchorage.

Nations met with Sonia and her children at an immigration office in Anchorage that same day.

“When I left there on Tuesday, my understanding was that she and the two minor children were going to be taken to a hotel for the night. And that her older son was going to be taken to the Anchorage jail,” Nations said.

However, Sonia was never taken to a hotel, instead calling Sanchez-Ramos around 10:30 p.m. Tuesday, he said.

“They’re putting me on an airplane,” she said.

Arriaga told him she and the two minor children were flown to San Diego Tuesday night, driven to a border crossing and released to walk across a bridge into Tijuana.

Alaska Department of Corrections spokespeople confirmed Tuesday that Alexis Arriaga, the 18-year-old son, was in DOC custody as of Wednesday afternoon.

Sonia spoke over the phone with Alaska’s News Source from a transit station in Tijuana on Wednesday evening. She said she and two of her of her children were taken from the immigration office in Anchorage directly to the airport, and agents told her they were going to California. Once they landed in San Diego, she said they got into a vehicle she thought was taking them to a hotel.

About 20 minutes into the drive from the airport, Sonia said she realized where they were headed because she saw signs for the Mexican border.

Sonia says she was forced to sign paperwork written in English, a language she doesn’t read or write, while an ICE officer who spoke Spanish assured her it was standard procedure, and that she would not be deported.

When asked to confirm details about the arrest and deportation procedures, Nations said she couldn’t comment due to other legal efforts being prepared and because she was still gathering that information.

Swift deportation

“It was very fast. We are very far away from Mexico here. And that was incredibly swift,” Nations said.

“The federal government usually is slow moving in general,” she said. “This was not slow moving.”

Sonia Arriaga says she entered the United States in 2023 and turned herself in at the border, triggering removal proceedings, which is a civil court process to determine whether she qualified for asylum, another form of relief, or would be ordered to deport.

Arriaga said she fled her home in Jalisco, Mexico due to domestic violence and gang activity.

While her immigration case was pending, Arriaga was permitted to remain in the country. After 150 days, she qualified for a work permit and obtained employment at several restaurants in Soldotna, Sanchez-Ramos said. One of her three children was also working, he said.

For three years, Arriaga maintains she remained current with her immigration court obligations until January, when she missed a hearing, Nations said, because she was given the wrong information about the date of her immigration hearing.

“She got incorrect information about when her next immigration court hearing was from somebody who was helping her with her case before we came in contact with her,” Nations said.

When Arriaga failed to appear, an immigration judge issued a removal order in absentia.

“And unfortunately, that happens more often than you might think,” Nations said. ”If you don’t show up to your immigration court hearing, then you get ordered deported in absentia, meaning that you didn’t show up to the hearing, but they’re still going to proceed with the process to decide whether you can be deported.”

The removal order was issued within days of the missed hearing, she said.

“And then I learned when I woke up early yesterday morning, Wednesday morning, I learned that actually they had been put on a plane to, I believe, California on Tuesday night, which was not what I was expecting to happen,” Nations said.

Five–year-old arrested

The arrest likely marks the first instance of minors being taken into ICE custody in Alaska, according to Nations, who has 20 years of experience working on immigration-related cases.

“I have never heard of a five-year-old being arrested by ICE in Alaska,” Nations said. “I have talked to colleagues this week to see if anybody else has a memory that I don’t have. I have not talked to anyone who has ever heard of a five-year-old being arrested by ICE in Alaska.”

Nations says the detention of such a young child raises questions about enforcement policy.

“There’s just no world in which that is acceptable to me. A five-year-old cannot be responsible for what their parents have done or other adults who are taking care of them,” Nations said.

“And so I think that, as a country, if we’ve gotten to the place where some five-year-olds are less human than others, or less deserving of basic human dignity, then we have a real problem.”

According to Nations, the detained family members have no criminal record.

Immigration law provides far fewer protections than criminal law, Nations explained. Immigration proceedings are civil matters, not criminal cases, meaning migrants do not have the right to government-appointed counsel.

“In the context of immigration, you have the right to have an attorney, but only if you get one yourself,” Nations said.

She said this creates a significant barrier for vulnerable populations.

“And so that means that in practice, a lot of people don’t end up having a lawyer, right? And it’s a very difficult process to navigate,” Nations explained.

While immigration law permits ICE to arrest someone with a removal order and allows removal to occur as soon as an order becomes final, there is a 90-day window to file a motion to reopen the case. However, that window does not automatically halt deportation proceedings.

“There’s no, like, stay of the government’s ability to remove someone during that time period,” Nations said.

Nations has already filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court seeking the family’s release and a motion to reopen Arriaga’s case, based on the fact that she received incorrect information about her court hearing date.

“She would have shown up to her hearing if she’d known what the date was,” Nations said.

DHS federal funding boost

The speed of the deportation raises questions about increased federal immigration enforcement and what means for attorneys trying to defend clients’ cases.

The federal government has significantly increased funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the past year and offered hiring bonuses of $50,000. This increased the ranks of ICE officers to 22,000 in an expanding national force bigger than most police departments in America, according to the Associated Press.

This comes after President Donald Trump promised the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history at the onset of his second term in office.

“We’ll have to stop needing sleep. I don’t know. I mean, it’s impossible, right?” Nations responded. “I am well-trained and prepared to handle this kind of situation. But when it moves that swiftly, it’s very difficult because there’s only a certain number of hours a day in which we can work, right?”

Nations criticized the complexity of immigration proceedings, noting that language barriers, lack of legal preparation and an intricate legal framework make it nearly impossible for many immigrants to mount an adequate defense.

“It’s too much to ask of people,” Nations said.

The Alaska arrests occur amid ongoing national debate over immigration enforcement policy. The Department of Homeland Security has been operating under a shutdown since Saturday as Congress remains divided over ICE reforms. The shutdown was triggered in part by shootings during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis last month.

What’s next

Sanchez-Ramos said he thought ICE was supposed to arrest criminals.

“This is a mother with young children that have been working, have been following the rules, have been going to school, have been paying their taxes, that have remained out of trouble, and just wanting to build a dream,” he said. “Why?”

He said he will go back to work, renew his passport and try to figure out how to see his family again, possibly by traveling to Mexico himself.

Sanchez-Ramos and Sonia were married on Feb. 5, he says, “just a few weeks go, as a matter of fact.” They met a couple years ago while both working at the same restaurant.

He already misses the kids a lot.

“I have a close relationship with all of them,” Sanchez-Ramos said, sharing details of each child’s personality, individual talents and even which foods they enjoyed. The five-year-old ”loves to eat vegetables ... he’s definitely got a good appetite, and he’s really cute," he said.

“I thought there was a process, and we’re filing the paperwork, and we’re doing the motion, we’re doing the petitions, doing everything legally that we’re supposed to be doing, and just getting booted out like that?” he said.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a response from an ICE spokesperson on the incident.

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