In most visitors, Alaska inspires wonder at its beauty, awe at its wildlife, and admiration for the hardiness of those who make their lives in its vast backcountry, enduring some of the harshest conditions on earth.
Alaska
ICE defends detention, deportation of Soldotna family as vigils held and lawmakers probe agency actions
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities on Monday defended the arrest of a Soldotna mother and her three children amid vigils for the family and a state legislative hearing on ICE’s actions in Alaska.
Sonia Espinoza Arriaga, a McDonald’s employee who’d recently married a U.S. citizen, and her three kids ages 18, 16 and 5 were taken into custody in Soldotna on Feb. 17.
The next day, Espinoza Arriaga and the two younger children were deported to Mexico, where they remain. The family is in Jalisco state, according to the family’s attorney. Since Sunday, Jalisco state has been wracked with street violence after the Mexican government killed the head of a notorious drug cartel.
Espinoza Arriaga, an asylum seeker, was fleeing cartel violence as well as fear of a past partner when she entered the U.S. in 2023, her husband, Alexander Sanchez-Ramos, has said.
In a statement Monday, ICE spokesperson Christine Cuttita said Espinoza Arriaga and her family “were issued a final order of removal as a family unit Jan. 13 after she failed to show up for her immigration court hearing.”
“ICE located and arrested Espinoza in Soldotna, Alaska on Feb. 17 during a targeted vehicle stop,” the statement said. The mother “is now facing the consequences of making the decision to not follow that lawful order to report to ICE,” Cuttita wrote.
Cuttita wrote that “upon Espinoza’s request, ICE ensured that her family remained unified and brought the entire family unit to ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations field office in Anchorage for processing. At no time were the children separated from their mother while in ICE custody.”
“ICE does NOT separate families,” wrote Cuttita. “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.”
While Espinoza Arriaga and her two other children were deported thousands of miles away to Mexico, her 18-year-old son was processed as an adult and held at the Anchorage jail before being transferred to the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington.
Their cases are in the process of both a federal habeas corpus petition and an appeal in immigration court, according to Lara Nations, the attorney.
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing held in Juneau on Monday, legislators heard from advocates as well as representatives of state agencies after the detention of Espinoza Arriaga and her children.
The hearing was organized by Rep. Andrew Gray, an Anchorage Democrat, and included speakers from advocacy and legal organizations as well as clergy members and representatives of state agencies, including the Alaska Department of Public Safety and the Alaska Department of Corrections.
The Alaska State Troopers have no role in enforcing immigration law, said Leon Morgan, a deputy commissioner with the Alaska Department of Public Safety.
“We don’t coordinate with ICE for immigration enforcement,” Morgan testified.
In criminal cases, “we will certainly work with our federal partners,” he said. But civil immigration enforcement matters aren’t in that purview, he said.
“That’s been a long-standing policy with the department,” Morgan said.
Some law enforcement agencies have formal cooperation agreements with ICE through programs in which state or local law enforcement officers are trained, certified and authorized by ICE to do functions of immigration enforcement such as serving and executing administrative warrants on people in their custody. Troopers are not part of that program, Morgan said.
Only two Alaska agencies — the Alaska Department of Corrections and the Kodiak Police Department — are currently listed by ICE as participating.
[Former ICE instructor says agency slashed training for new officers, lied to Congress]
Asked about media reports that Espinoza Arriaga and her kids had been taken to an Alaska State Troopers post in Soldotna, Morgan said he thought ICE had maybe switched vehicles in the parking lot.
“I don’t think we leveraged any trooper assets to do that,” he said.
The Alaska Department of Corrections has an agreement to hold federal detainees of all kinds — both those charged with federal crimes and civil immigration detainees, testified Zane Nighswonger, director of institutions with the department.
Immigration detainees are subject to the same conditions as criminal defendants in jail, but “we do keep them separate from the prisoner population, as they’re non-criminally charged,” he said.
People usually spend about 72 hours in the Anchorage jail until they are flown to the Northwest Detention Center in Washington, where some stay for months or even years.
The committee also heard testimony from Soldotna-area residents and community leaders, including a mom who said her daughter was in the same kindergarten class as 5-year-old Matias Espinoza Arriaga. Alison Flack spoke of working with the boy as a classroom volunteer just days before he was taken into ICE custody.
“He was working so hard. He was following my instructions and sounding out his words,” she said. “I could tell how proud he felt.”
A few days later, her daughter told her the child hadn’t been at school. When she read news accounts of the family’s detention, “I immediately got a lump in my throat,” she said.
Families were shaken to hear that he had been detained along with his mother and brothers. Flack said she wasn’t sure how to explain the situation to her daughter.
“Should I tell her that he moved and just hope and pray that she doesn’t find out the truth?” she said.
More than 120 people showed up for a meeting in Soldotna to talk about what happened to the family, said Meredith Harbor, a pastor with Christ Lutheran Church in Soldotna. Many of them didn’t know the family personally, she said.
A vigil for the family Monday night drew an overflow crowd at St. John United Methodist Church in South Anchorage.
Lead pastor Andy Bartel said he wasn’t surprised by the large turnout.
“I think most people want to feel empowered, that they have a voice, that we are a nation that has been by the people and for the people,” Bartel said.
Daily News photojournalist Marc Lester contributed.
High School
Legion Baseball
Sunday
Issaquah (WA) 7, Wasilla 5
Monday
Dimond 14, Eagle River 4
West 13, Kenai 4
Service 2, East 1
Tuesday
Roseburg (OR) 16, Wasilla 5
Kenai 7, Dimond 2
Kenai 15, Dimond 4
Palmer 5, Service 4
Palmer 20, Service 11
Chugiak 8, East 7
South 3, Ketchikan 1
Fairbanks 10, Chena River 4
Wednesday
West 4, Palmer 3
Chugiak 13, Eagle River 3
South 4, Ketchikan 3
Ketchikan 4, South 1
Thursday
Service 2, Dimond 1
Ketchikan 9, South 6
Friday
Wasilla 20, Dimond 4
Palmer 11, Eagle River 5
Auke Bay 12, East 2
Fairbanks 13, Chena River 5
Kenai 15, West 5
Kenai 24, West 8
Saturday
Chena River vs. Fairbanks (Late)
East vs. Auke Bay (Late)
Auke Bay vs. East (Late)
Palmer vs. Wasilla (Late)
Alaska Baseball League
Sunday
Mat-Su Miners 7, Anchorage Bucs 4
Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks 18, Peninsula Oilers 7
Monday
Mat-Su Miners 14, Anchorage Glacier Pilots 3
Peninsula Oilers 11, Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks 4
Tuesday
Anchorage Bucs 8, Anchorage Glacier Pilots 7
Peninsula Oilers 7, Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks 6
Wednesday
Mat-Su Miners 10, Anchorage Glacier Pilots 0
Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks 5, Peninsula Oilers 3
Thursday
Peninsula Oilers 6, Chugiak-Eagle River Chinooks 5
Mat-Su Miners 7, Anchorage Glacier Pilots 2
Friday
Anchorage Bucs 2, Mat-Su Miners 0
Saturday
Anchorage Bucs vs. Anchorage Glacier Pilots (Late)
Mat-Su Miners vs. Peninsula Oilers (Late)
Anchorage, AK—U.S. Senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan and Congressman Nick Begich (all R-Alaska) today applauded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ (Corps) approval of a permit to facilitate construction of a life-saving road between the isolated community of King Cove, Alaska and nearby Cold Bay. The one-lane gravel connector will provide reliable transportation access from King Cove to Cold Bay, which is home to an all-weather airport.
“This is more good news for King Cove and all who care about the health, safety, and wellbeing of the hundreds of people who live there,” Murkowski said.“After decades of relentlessly making the case and pushing with everything we have, this life-saving road is finally almost a reality. A combination of careful analysis and common sense from the Trump administration—the Department of the Interior and now the Army Corps—have brought us to this point. I thank them for their continued commitment to protecting and improving these Alaskans’ lives.”
“For Alaskans, the decades-long King Cove Road impasse has been a symbol of an uncaring, out-of-touch, faraway federal government that prioritizes the lives of birds over people,” said Sullivan. “The great residents of King Cove time and again have kept hope alive, despite setbacks, most recently when the Biden administration disregarded the voices of the community and withdrew the previously approved land exchange. The permit issued by the Corps of Engineers today is vindication for King Cove, putting us closer than ever before to delivering a lifesaving, 11-mile, single-lane gravel road to the all-weather airport in Cold Bay. I want to thank the Administration, especially Secretary Burgum and Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works Telle, for listening to Alaskans, for caring about their safety and well-being, and for putting us on the cusp of a historic breakthrough for safe and reliable access for King Cove.”
“This permit approval by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is a critical milestone in a decades-long effort to provide the people of King Cove with the infrastructure they need to build an essential life-saving road,” said Begich. “For nearly 50 years, the community has advocated for a road connecting King Cove to the all-weather airport in Cold Bay. This project addresses an obvious public safety need and will provide a reliable route for emergency access in adverse weather conditions. I commend everyone who helped move this project forward, from residents who never stopped advocating, to Secretary Burgum, the Army Corps of Engineers, Governor Dunleavy, and Alaska’s congressional delegation over many years.”
King Cove is located between two volcanic peaks near the end of the Alaska Peninsula, and its small gravel airstrip is typically closed by bad weather for more than 100 days each year. Many flights not canceled are delayed by wind, turbulence, fog, rain, or snow squalls; travel by boat is often impacted by waves that can top 12 feet and the lack of suitable dock infrastructure in Cold Bay. By comparison, Cold Bay, which is less than 30 miles from King Cove, has one of the longest runways in the state and it is closed an average of just 10 days per year.
At present, there are roads leading out of both King Cove and Cold Bay but no connection between them. The lack of dependable transportation access to Cold Bay routinely forces emergency medevacs from King Cove that risk the lives of patients and responders alike. It also creates significant quality-of-life issues, ranging from King Cove residents’ inability to regularly receive mail to week-long travel delays for students returning home from various activities.
King Cove residents have sought this life-saving connector road for decades. In late 2025, a major breakthrough occurred when the Trump administration conveyed490 federal acres to the King Cove Corporation in exchange for 1,739 acres of KCC-owned land near the Kinzarof Lagoon and the relinquishment of selection rights to more than 5,430 acres still owed to KCC under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
The Corps permit issued this week is valid for five years and allows for dredge and fill activities to occur on just over five acres of land. For perspective, the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge spans 315,000 acres and there are at least 130 million acres of wetlands across Alaska.
More information is available here.
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Alaska
An Alaska vacation can remind Israelis the world doesn’t revolve around them | The Jerusalem Post
For Israelis, it can also inspire humility. Not because the Jewish state is smaller than Denali National Park, but because in Alaska, one is reminded that the world neither revolves around Israel nor is obsessed with it.
That realization came on a trip The Wife and I took to America’s Last Frontier last month.
“Where is your final destination today?” the woman checking us in for our flight home at the Anchorage airport asked chirpily.
“Tel Aviv,” I replied. “Where’s that?”
When I said it was in Israel, she smiled and said, “Oh.”
Lest one think this was just a fluke: on the plane a few hours later, another Alaskan asked where we were going. When we answered “Tel Aviv,” she said she had never heard of it.
Granted, two people do not a Pew Poll make, but they do offer a small corrective to the perception – fed by the media most of us follow – that the world is preoccupied with Israel, thinking about us obsessively, talking about us constantly, and cursing us unremittingly.
The last part, at least in Alaska, is also not true. During our two weeks there, we saw no “Free Palestine” graffiti, nor were we subjected to dirty looks or “child killer” comments when we said we were from Israel.
All of America, it turns out, is not Mamdani’s Manhattan, nor does social media present a proportionate picture of that country’s reality.
One of the problems with social media is that every incident of antisemitism is posted online. The incidents are real and rising at an alarming rate, but seeing them all in one place creates a disproportionate sense of how likely you are to encounter them while traveling.
Watch enough clips of a Jewish kid harassed on a New York subway or an Israeli couple berated at a hotel in California, and you begin to wonder whether the same thing awaits you when you ride an American subway or check into a hotel.
It doesn’t. Yet the cumulative effect is that you begin to wonder how open to be about your Israeliness. You don’t decide to hide it, but simply having to ask the question adds a mini-layer of apprehension before every trip.
When Israel comes along for the ride
You also learn to read the Uber.
“Honey,” I urged The Wife before we got into an Uber in Chicago during a brief layover, “you don’t have to say you’re from Israel.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m not going to hide who I am.”
“Wonderful sentiment,” I replied. “The driver’s name is Rabah. Humor me.”
We didn’t volunteer our place of origin, nor did he ask.
But on the entire trip, that was the only time we consciously withheld that nugget of biographical information. Everywhere else, we proudly said we were from Israel – and it was fine. More than fine: it was often a conversation starter.
On a whale-watching excursion, we sat across from a young couple from China who work at Google. They were intrigued that we lived in Israel, and even more fascinated that we passed on the chicken sandwiches being served.
Instead of looking for sea creatures, The Wife spent a good part of the trip explaining why some of the fish in the sea we can eat and others we can’t.
“Honey,” I whispered at one point, a bit annoyed. “We didn’t pay all this money for you to give an introductory lecture on kashrut. Look for the damn puffins.”
Since October 7, another layer has been added to the anxiety of travel: whether your flight will be canceled at the drop of a ballistic missile.
One doesn’t just hop over to Alaska on a whim; it takes planning and a special occasion to justify the expense. For us, it was 40 years of wedded bliss, so we booked back in October after being warned that rental cars sell out months in advance.
We chose United. But just days after the war with Iran broke out, United – typically – canceled flights until mid-June, four days after our planned departure. We acted quickly – well, The Wife acted quickly – and switched to El Al. Still, it complicated the trip further.
Then came the more serious question: Do you leave the country when one of your sons or your son-in-law is in miluim in Lebanon, Gaza, or Syria?
My first instinct was no: you don’t leave when one of your children is serving. That may have worked before Oct. 7, when reserve duty meant a few weeks a year and could be planned around.
But today, when they have each logged upward of 350 days, saying you won’t leave while they are serving essentially means that you won’t leave at all.
Which, by the way, is hardly the end of the world. But what can I say? I like to travel.
So we went, even though as we were watching bears and sea otters, my youngest son was dodging drones in Lebanon.
“Go,” he said. “What are you going to be able to do by being here? And if, God forbid, something happens, you’ll come back.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “How can we enjoy it if we are worrying about you?”
“You’ll figure out a way,” he teased.
And he was right. Sure, we worried, but less than if we were here. Distance, it turns out, has its advantages. I wasn’t glued to the news, tracking every development on his front.
Perhaps that was Alaska’s greatest gift. Not the calving glaciers, surfacing whales, or foraging bears, magnificent though they were. It was the realization that while Israel is the center of our world, it is not the center of everyone else’s. Every now and then, regaining that perspective is refreshing. ■
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