Alaska

As crackdown begins under Trump, Alaska advocates educate local immigrants on legal rights

Published

1 year ago

January 26, 2025

As crackdown begins under Trump, Alaska advocates educate local immigrants on legal rights

Immigration attorneys Nicolás Olano and Lara Nations, photographed at Nations Law Group on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025 in Anchorage. (Loren Holmes / ADN)

Anchorage attorneys and advocates are preparing local immigrants without citizenship for a Trump administration that, in its first few hours on Monday, pushed ahead sweeping actions on immigration.

Under former President Joe Biden, immigration surged to its highest in American history, averaging about 2 million people per year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In an executive order on Monday, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border to address what the order called a “catastrophic immigration crisis.”

“There’s a lot of fear,” said Anchorage immigration attorney Lara Nations. “Having information is powerful, and empowers people take control of their own life, and helps address some of the fear.”

Local advocates say they have set out to meet what they say is a profound need among immigrant communities: the need for information.

In Alaska, about 8% of the state’s total population is foreign-born — close to 60,000 people, according to 2023 Census Bureau statistics. That population includes people with a wide range of statuses, including those who reside in the U.S. both lawfully and unlawfully. It includes: those who have become citizens through naturalization, green-card holders on a path to citizenship, a variety of visa holders, those with temporary protected status, refugees and asylees who have fled war or persecution in their home nations, and those without documentation, according to the Census Bureau.

Some of those immigrants may be vulnerable to deportation in an administration that’s proven unfriendly to them, said American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska executive director Mara Kimmel, referencing Haitian immigrants with legal status in Springfield, Ohio, who Trump has repeatedly called “illegal” and whose status he’s threatened to revoke.

But it’s hard to say exactly who will be at risk of deportation, or how many, she said.

That’s, in part, because it’s unclear which populations the Trump administration is prioritizing taking action against.

Trump campaigned on the mass deportation of millions of unauthorized immigrants.

But many of the people without permanent status in the United States have permission to be here, said Nations.

That includes 2.5 million asylum-seekers awaiting their claims, hundreds of thousands of people granted humanitarian parole from countries like Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ukraine and Afghanistan, and the half-million undocumented people brought to the U.S. as children who are protected under an Obama-era law, according to the Pew Research Center and National Immigration Forum.

Also, it’s not clear whether some of the new policies will survive the courts. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order to end birthright citizenship in a move that’s already been challenged in federal court, then blocked by a federal judge on Thursday. In a statement this week, Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor said he didn’t have a position on whether Alaska may defend or oppose the order, but said that “it is important to address the crisis at the border and stem the tide of illegal immigration.”

“The truth is, we just don’t know (what will happen),” Kimmel said of immigration under the new presidency. “And so my big message in all of this is, if people are prepared and know their rights, that’s their best defense.”

Mara Kimmel is executive director of ACLU Alaska. Photographed in her office on Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025. (Bill Roth / ADN)

Since December, the ACLU of Alaska has provided advice and information at two information sessions aimed at different populations in the state. In December, the group was invited to present on knowing your rights as a non-citizen for a Pacific Islander audience at an Anchorage gathering. Last week, Kimmel and her staff gave the same presentation to a different group in Anchorage, in partnership with Spanish-speaking immigration attorneys Lara Nation and Nicolás Olano of Nations Law Group to the Latino community.

The idea was to give noncitizens practical advice about how to interact with local police and immigration police, should enforcement crackdowns become more commonplace, said Olano, a U.S. citizen who immigrated from Colombia in 1999.

Attorneys advised attendees on how to respond to escalating scenarios, ranging from routine traffic stops, to an immigration police officer showing up at your door or place of work, to an arrest. ACLU recorded the event and plans to send to Latino communities throughout the state.

The purpose is to help people “realize how immigration police (can) approach them, on a practical level, without making it so abstract,” Olano said. “Like, ‘hey, (they could) show up at your house. They (could) stop you when you’re leaving your house, so they avoid the issues of needing a warrant to get in there.’ I think that we gave practical tools to people to know what to expect, and also how to protect their rights.”

If noncitizens can take one piece of advice on exercising their civil rights, Olano said, it’s this:

“Just be quiet and ask for a lawyer,” he said.

Nations advises undocumented or under-documented people contact an immigration attorney to get “accurate immigration advice … about their specific situation.”

The U.S. Constitution affords noncitizens, including undocumented immigrants, virtually the same rights as citizens, Olano said. That includes the right to due process, the right to remain silent, and the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, according to the ACLU.

State police cannot ask a person for their immigration status in Alaska, but the same is not true for federal agents such as Customs and Border Protection at an airport or a border crossing, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

“That doesn’t mean that you have to answer them,” Olano said. “They can ask you…and you can say, ‘I’m not talking without a lawyer.’”

In all scenarios, attorneys advise people dealing with any law enforcement officer or federal agent to remain calm and polite, and not to run away, lie, or give false documents.

They are also suggesting that families make emergency plans for themselves, and particularly their children, in the event a parent is detained, arrested, or deported.

A longtime advocate for the Latino community, Lina Mariscol, stressed the importance of emergency plans in that situation, including child care and power of attorney for children.

“Better safe than sorry,” said Mariscol, who immigrated from Mexico in 1983, and served as the honorary consulate of Mexico in Anchorage from 2000 through 2007 (the Mexican consulate in Anchorage closed in 2015). “It’s kind of like an advance directive. If you need it right now, it’s already too late.”

In an emailed statement this week, Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said he supported the president’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, and emphasized a need for legal migration.

Fellow Alaska Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski in a Thursday interview said that while some of Trump’s new orders are “sending out a message…a very clear message, about where they wish to head on certain policies…the details of implementation of them are not clearly articulated.” In regards to birthright citizenship, Murkowski said the 14th amendment has “a long history, decades and decades, where that has been respected.”

Alaska Republican U.S. Rep. Nick Begich did not respond to requests for comment.

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Alaska

An Alaska vacation can remind Israelis the world doesn’t revolve around them | The Jerusalem Post

Published

10 hours ago

July 11, 2026

Press Room

An Alaska vacation can remind Israelis the world doesn’t revolve around them | The Jerusalem Post

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.

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.”

An aerial view of Anchorage, Alaska. (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

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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Alaska

Watch My Buddy Matt Not Get Eaten by Bears in Alaska

Published

20 hours ago

July 10, 2026

Press Room

Watch My Buddy Matt Not Get Eaten by Bears in Alaska

I’m typically pretty wordy. But just watch the video.

Disclaimer: Matt Addington is a professional. These bears grazed toward him from 100 yards away while he held tight. Do not try this ever, under any circumstances, or you will likely spend the rest of your time on this earth as bear poop.

Matt Addington is an incredible professional photographer, and I can say that from personal experience. He’s captured images of me in rough shape and somehow made them stunnin’. The Minnesota-based photographer and filmmaker has built a career telling outdoor stories, and his latest bear video proves he knows exactly where to point a camera.

Places like Katmai National Park in Alaska (where this video was taken) can offer unusually close encounters with brown bears, thanks in part to abundant food and tightly managed visitor access. That doesn’t make encounters like this casual or safe to imitate.

Addington is an extremely experienced outdoorsman, and he was photographing with professional guides Scott and Jackie Stone. For people hoping to photograph bears this way, a guided wildlife photography tour is one of the safest ways to do it. Do not try this in Yellowstone or your local national forest.

The bears were grazing nearly 100 yards away when the group set up. They stayed put as the animals continued feeding and gradually moved closer, resulting in some incredible footage and a once-in-a-lifetime photo.

I can only hope he wore his brown pants under his waders.

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Alaska

Black bear breaks into Alaskan mall, eats a peach and relieves itself on floor before leaving: video

Published

1 day ago

July 10, 2026

Press Room

Black bear breaks into Alaskan mall, eats a peach and relieves itself on floor before leaving: video

Can bearly believe it!

A black bear was caught on camera seemingly running errands at a local shopping mall in Anchorage, Alaska over the weekend.

The bear entered the commissary mall at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson around 9 a.m. Sunday, KTUU reported, citing a JBER spokesperson.

Wild footage shows the young cub strolling through the commissary’s automatic doors and exploring all that the mall had to offer.

The hungry bear stole and ate a piece of fruit before emptying its bowels on the hallway floor on its way out of the building.

Kory Godbout, who works at the barber shop on the military base, was waiting for his first customer of the day when he spotted the furry intruder traveling through the automatic doors.

“My coworker, who is cutting hair in front of me, she yelled, ‘Bear!’” Godbout recalled.

“And I looked up from my phone and the bear was walking into the barber shop right in front of me,” the barber said. “And we all ran into the break room and shut the door behind us.”

After a few minutes, Godbout and his coworkers emerged from the break room and followed the out-of-place bear into the commissary, where it took a peach from the grocery store and ate it.

The barber recalled that a few onlookers were “going big to try and scare” the bear out of the grocery store.

But all of a sudden, the black bear returned to the barber shop.

“By that time, we were able to run back to the shop and then lock the door,” Godbout said.

“And then we were watching him from the window and then that’s when he decided to, you know, use the restroom in the hallway.”

Officers from Conservation Law Enforcement attended the peculiar grizzly scene and were able to direct the wild animal towards a river and into the woods, according to the JBER spokesperson.

JBER’s wildlife program manager Colette Brandt said in a press release that the bear had triggered the automatic doors and that Sunday’s events were entirely incidental, KTUU reported.

While there has been a decline in bear-related calls since the military base installed bear-resistant dumpsters, seven bears have been put down at JBER for public safety over the past year.

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