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Alaska lawmakers probe state detention policies following ICE arrest of Soldotna family

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Alaska lawmakers probe state detention policies following ICE arrest of Soldotna family


The arrest of a Soldotna family by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, including two teens and a 5-year-old, has prompted a wave of concern and lawmakers to hold an investigatory hearing on Monday on the arrest and detention of minors in Alaska.

“As far as I am aware, the detention of children by ICE in Alaska is unprecedented,” said Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. In opening remarks, he questioned if federal agents provided full due process to the family and honored legal protections for children.

“Is Alaska about to see more children detained?” he asked.

ICE agents arrested Sonia Espinoza Arriaga at her home in Soldotna on Feb. 17, and apprehended her three children — ages 18, 16 and 5. Arriaga is married to an Alaskan U.S. citizen and was in court proceedings to gain asylum after fleeing violence in Mexico, according to news reports. The next day, Arriaga and her two younger children were deported to Jalisco, where they remain. The 18-year-old was transported and detained at the Anchorage Correctional Complex and transferred on Feb. 20 to a privately-run ICE detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, according to news reports.

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The arrest comes as ICE operations are ramping up in Alaska and nationwide, amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Gray noted the agency saw a historic funding increase last year and now has a budget of roughly $85 billion.

Members of the House Judiciary Committee put questions to officials with the Alaska Department of Corrections and Department of Public Safety on the extent of the state’s involvement in ICE operations and detention of minors. They also heard testimony from community members, attorneys and clergy expressing outrage and concern at ICE operations.

Gray said the committee had invited representatives from ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to testify about the arrest and issues raised, but they declined to appear. He said his office has submitted a list of questions to the agencies, including questions about due process, and have not yet heard back.

Gray said his office will be drafting a committee resolution urging a change in federal policy, and said if ICE fails to answer the committee’s questions, the committee will “look at other options for compelling their testimony.”

State agencies questioned on policy around detaining minors and cooperation with ICE

Jen Winkelman, commissioner of DOC, said the department has an agreement with federal authorities to detain people arrested under federal charges, including with ICE for civil immigration charges.

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“Does DOC detain minors?” Gray asked. Winkelman said no.

Winkelman did not say in the committee meeting whether DOC would hold children detained by ICE.

“We have the contract for the federal government to hold individuals that may come in in a non-criminal capacity,” Winkelman said. “When the ICE agents detain somebody, they will bring them to us, the individual and a piece of paper that essentially authorizes us to hold them.”

In the case of Arriaga, her husband, Alexander Sanchez-Ramos, told reporters that initially she and her two youngest children would be held in a hotel in Anchorage and guarded by federal agents, but then he learned they were flown to San Diego the same evening of their arrest, then driven to the Mexico border and deported.

ICE did not immediately respond to questions on Tuesday about the expedited deportation of the Arriaga family and plans and protocols for detaining minors and families in Alaska.

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Zane Nighswonger, director of institutions for DOC, told lawmakers that ICE detainees are held in state prisons, but are held separately.

“They’re basically subject to the same security measures we have for our prisoners. We do keep them separate from the prisoner population, as they’re non-criminally charged,” he said Monday. “They recreate separately from other prisoners, have access to their telephone calls separately from other prisoners, and then showers and things like that.”

Nighswonger said individuals arrested by ICE are typically held in Alaska jails and then transferred to federal detention facilities within 72 hours.

The Alaska State Troopers do not participate in ICE enforcement, Leon Morgan, deputy commissioner for the Alaska Department of Public Safety, told lawmakers on Monday. “We don’t coordinate with ICE for immigration enforcement,” he said.

Morgan said for criminal cases Troopers will work with federal partners, but not cases related to immigration enforcement. He said Troopers have a policy to mitigate effects of law enforcement actions when children are involved. “In terms of how ICE does their job, or what they do, that is just beyond or outside the scope of how we operate,” he said.

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Rep. Chuck Kopp, R-Anchorage asked what state legislators can do to constrain ICE action in Alaska given federal authority outweighs state law.

Elora Mukherjee, a clinical professor of law at Columbia Law School and director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic, testified that lawmakers can not only speak out, raise concerns and demand answers from federal authorities, but states are also taking action to block ICE enforcement actions and developing new detention centers.

“I think your committee is doing exactly the right thing by inviting officials from the federal government, from ICE, from DHS, to testify about what is happening in Alaska,” she said. “Right now, it seems that in Alaska, as in many states across the country, the federal government does not want local and state legislators to know what they are doing.”

Advocates call arrests and detainments a ‘grave concern’

Attorneys and immigration advocates testified that the avenues for legal immigration are being cut back by the Trump administration at every level — from travel bans, to canceling visa and refugee programs, to petitioning to end birthright citizenship — resulting in more and more people being arrested and deported.

Arriaga had reportedly applied for and was in the process of obtaining asylum for her family. A spokesperson for ICE said she had failed to appear for a court hearing in January, prompting deportation, according to news reports.

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Mukherjee testified that ICE is increasingly arresting and detaining children and families.

“From January to October 2025, at least 3,800 children under the age of 18, including 20 infants, were detained by US immigration authorities,” she said, and many are held beyond the legal limit of 20 days.

She spoke about her experience representing children and families held at the privately-run South Texas Family Detention Center in Dilley, Texas, and the traumatizing conditions of detention there.

“Among my other clients at Dilley have been a two year old boy who was breastfeeding in detention. A six year old boy had a leukemia diagnosis. An eight year old girl began wetting the bed. An 11 year old girl lost hearing in one year. A 14 year old girl engaged in self harm. All of these children and their parents were detained despite being eligible for release,” she said.

“ICE has the authority to release these families who are not flight risks on parole as they seek asylum and other forms of humanitarian protections in the United States,” she noted. “None of these children or their parents had a criminal history anywhere in the world.”

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A Soldotna mother, Alison Flack, whose daughter attended kindergarten with Arriaga’s five-year-old, testified he was flourishing in school and learning English, and that the community is shaken by his arrest.

“We’re all now faced with the decision of what to tell our children,” she said. “Should I tell her that he moved and just hope and pray that she doesn’t find out the truth? Our state is better than this.

“I don’t want to tell my daughter that the grown-ups have done something so terrible, the ones she’s supposed to be able to trust,” she said.

Clergy members in Anchorage and Soldotna testified that the incident and actions from federal immigration authorities raise grave moral concerns.

“We believe there’s been a serious breach of what we as clergy leaders would consider basic sacred family values,” said Rev. Michael Burke, pastor of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church of Anchorage and speaking on behalf of a multi-faith group.

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“We tore a family from their community rootedness in this recent event, and this harm that was done, potential harm to children that will have a lifetime memory of trauma was not caused by any bad actors other than those of the federal government themselves,” he said. “This raises grave concerns as a matter of policy, the rule of law and our fundamental ethical commitments to one another as members of the community.”



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Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 ASAA State Championship Brackets – March 10

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Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 ASAA State Championship Brackets – March 10


The 2026 Alaska high school girls basketball state championships begin this week, and High School On SI has brackets for all four classifications.

The brackets will be updated with scores and matchups throughout the week.

All four classifications will play their state championship games at Alaska Airlines Center in Anchorage.

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The 1A and 2A championships run March 11-14. Classes 3A and 4A play the following week, March 18-21.

Alaska High School Girls Basketball 2026 State Championship Brackets, Matchups, Schedule – March 10

3/11 – Shaktoolik (1) vs. Arlicaq (16)

3/11 – Kake (8) vs. Tri-Valley (9)

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3/11 – Fort Yukon (4) vs. Andreafski (13)

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3/11 – Sand Point (5) vs. Napaaqutgmiut (12)

3/11 – Scammon Bay (2) vs. Nunamiut (15)

3/11 – Akiuk Memorial (7) vs. Newhalen (10)

3/11 – Davis-Romoth (3) vs. Cook Inlet Academy (14)

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3/11 – Hoonah (6) vs. Shishmaref (11)


3/12 – Seward (1) vs. Chevak (8)

3/12 – Metlakatla (4) vs. Cordova (5)

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3/12 – Craig (2) vs. Susitna Valley (7)

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3/12 – Glennallen (3) vs. Degnan (6)


3/18 – Barrow (1) vs. Kotzebue (8)

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3/18 – Grace Christian (4) vs. Galena (5)

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3/18 – Monroe Catholic (2) vs. Delta (7)

3/18 – Mt. Edgecumbe (3) vs. Kenai Central (6)

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3/18 – Mountain City Christian Academy (1) vs. North Pole (8)

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3/18 – Colony (4) vs. West (5)

3/18 – Bartlett (2) vs. Juneau-Douglas (7)

3/18 – Wasilla (3) vs. Service (6)


More Coverage from High School On SI



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Made In The USA: The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company

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Made In The USA: The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company


This is the Alaska Wall Tent by the Alaska Gear Company, each one is made in the United States from Sunforger 13oz DLX, a double-filled, pre-shrunk, marine-grade canvas ideal for longterm outdoor use.

The Alaska Wall Tent comes in an array of sizes and versions, allowing you to choose the one that best suits your individual use-case. They’re all individually made in Alaska, and perhaps even more importantly, they’re all tested extensively to be able to handle local conditions.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 5

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 2

Image DescriptionThis is the Alaska Wall Tent by the Alaska Gear Company, each one is made in the United States from Sunforger 13oz DLX, a double-filled, pre-shrunk, marine-grade canvas ideal for longterm outdoor use.

History Speedrun: The Alaska Gear Company

The Alaska Gear Company was formerly known as Airframes Alaska, it’s an aviation and outdoor equipment supplier and manufacturer headquartered in Palmer, Alaska. The company is led by majority owner Sean McLaughlin, who bought the original bush airplane parts business when it had just two employees and $100,000 in annual revenue. McLaughlin has since grown it to approximately 100 employees and $20 million in annual sales.

The company can trace its early roots to a licensed maker of Piper PA-18 Super Cub fuselages at Birchwood Airport. Through a series of acquisitions, including Reeve Air Motive (an aircraft parts retailer operating out of Anchorage’s Merrill Field since 1950, Alaska Tent & Tarp, and Northern Sled Works, the company grew well beyond aviation into outdoor recreation and cold-weather gear.

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That diversification ultimately drove the rebrand from Airframes Alaska to Alaska Gear Company in late 2023, as the old name no longer conveyed the full scope of what the company produces and sells.

The Alaska Gear Company now operates out of three locations – a 100,000 square foot manufacturing facility in Palmer, a production facility in Fairbanks, and a retail store with an in-house sewing workshop at Merrill Field in Anchorage.

Its product lines span two major categories. On the aviation side, the company is best known for its hand-built Alaskan Bushwheel tundra tires, FAA-approved titanium landing gear, Super Cub fuselage modifications, and a wide range of bush plane parts. On the outdoor side, it manufactures Arctic Oven hot tents, canvas wall tents, custom freight and pulk sleds, and a modernized version of the iconic military bunny boot designed for extreme cold weather conditions.

More recently in 2024, the Alaska Gear Company was named “Made in Alaska Manufacturer of the Year” by the Alaska Department of Commerce.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company

The Alaska Canvas Wall Tent is a handmade-in-Alaska canvas tent made from 13oz Sunforger DLX double-filled, preshrunk, marine-grade cotton canvas that’s treated to resist fire, water, and mildew while still remaining breathable.

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It comes in four sizes, including 8×10, 10×12, 12×14, and 14×16 feet, all with 5-foot wall heights, and it’s available either unframed (starting at $1,295) or with a frame (starting at $2,300). The unframed version can be constructed in the field using lengths of wood sourced from the area, reducing the initial pack weight – this is crucial for trips into the wilderness by bush plane where every pound of weight is critical.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 7

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 4

Image DescriptionIt comes in four sizes, including 8×10, 10×12, 12×14, and 14×16 feet, all with 5-foot wall heights, and it’s available either unframed (starting at $1,295) or with a frame (starting at $2,300). The unframed version can be constructed in the field using lengths of wood sourced from the area, reducing the initial pack weight – this is crucial for trips into the wilderness by bush plane where every pound of weight is critical.

All tents include a 4.5 inch oval stove jack for use with wood or propane stoves, as well as a 56 inch triangular rear window with insect screening, an 18oz vinyl sod cloth around the base to block drafts and moisture, ridgepole openings at both ends, rope-reinforced eaves, brass grommets, overlapping door flaps with ties, a heavy-duty zippered door, and 100 feet of sisal rope for tie-downs.

The tents are now available to buy direct from the Alaska Gear Company here, and at the time of writing they have stock ready to ship out immediately.

The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 10
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 9
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 8
The Alaska Wall Tent By The Alaska Gear Company 3

Images courtesy of the Alaska Gear Company



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Lakes are growing in Alaska. That’s not entirely a bad thing

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Lakes are growing in Alaska. That’s not entirely a bad thing

The St. Elias Mountains in southeast Alaska are dotted with over 100 lakes where glaciers crumble into milky, turquoise water. Those lakes are expanding at an ever-quickening pace.

The lakes will quadruple in size over the next century or two, scientists report March 9 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This growth will transform landscapes, create new salmon habitat and may even change the course of a major river.

“We are seeing the great age of ice retreat” in Alaska, says Daniel McGrath, a glaciologist at Colorado State University in Fort Collins. “These glaciers are just peeling back from the landscape,” revealing deep grooves they carved in the Earth, where lakes are now forming.

Glacial hydrologist Eran Hood of the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, who was not part of the study, adds that “understanding where these lakes are going to emerge is important” because it “changes the whole nature of the downstream ecosystem.”

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Hugging the coastline along the Alaska-Canada border, the tiny mountainous region that includes the St. Elias Mountains is losing 60 cubic kilometers of ice per year. Because lakes absorb solar heat, the glaciers that shed ice into lakes are shrinking faster than those that terminate on dry land. Across southeast Alaska, these lakes attached to glaciers have expanded by 60 percent since 1986, reaching a combined area of 1,300 square kilometers.

McGrath and his colleagues wondered how far this runaway expansion might go. So, they combined satellite images with estimates of ice thickness — mapping deeply eroded grooves that are still hidden under glaciers.

The results were “eye-opening,” McGrath says. The team identified 4,200 square kilometers of glacier-covered grooves adjacent to existing lakes.

He and his colleagues predict that the lakes will continue to expand — causing rapid ice retreat — until they fill those grooves, reaching a combined size of around 5,500 square kilometers, an area the size of Delaware.

“By the end of this century, all of these lakes will probably be more or less fully developed,” says study coauthor Louis Sass III, a glaciologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the Alaska Science Center in Anchorage. But those growing lakes are already reshaping entire landscapes in a way that is often overlooked in public discourse around glacier retreat.

Many of Alaska’s glaciers terminate on dry land, and their meltwater often creates barren, rocky floodplains downstream, where the streams alternate between trickles and floods — constantly branching and shifting course as they lay down sediment released by the glacier.

“Those habitats are fairly inhospitable for a lot of fish,” including some salmon, says Jonathan Moore, an aquatic ecologist with Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada. The water is too cold, and fish eggs “get swept out or buried by the floods every year.”

But as glaciers retreat into lakes and those lakes expand, their meltwater has time to drop its sediment and warm a few degrees in the lake before spilling into a river. Rivers that carry less sediment are less prone to shifting channels.

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A 2025 study by Moore and remote sensing scientist Diane Whited of the University of Montana found that as glacial lakes expanded over 38 years in southeast Alaska, the downstream river channels stabilized, allowing willows and bushes to spread across floodplains.

“It creates salmon habitat,” Hood says. A 2021 study by Moore and Hood predicted that by 2100, glacial retreat in southeast Alaska will transform 6,000 kilometers of river channels into decent habitat for some local species of salmon. The lakes themselves will create spawning grounds for sockeye salmon — an important commercial species.

But these changes will come with upheaval.

For instance, one major river, the Alsek, will probably shift its course as retreating glaciers cause two lakes to merge, providing an easier path to the ocean.

People in Juneau are feeling another dramatic effect of expanding lakes. At least once per year, a lake dammed by the nearby Mendenhall Glacier spills out in a flash flood that gushes through town, forcing some residents to build protective levees around their homes.

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These ecosystems “are going to be transformed,” Moore says. “But that transformation is going to be pretty violent and pretty dangerous.”



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