ANCHORAGE, Alaska — On Tuesday morning, Alexander Sanchez-Ramos went outside to smoke a cigarette on the porch of his Soldotna home when he noticed a cluster of unmarked SUVs with tinted windows gathering on his street.

At first, he wasn't sure why.

Then federal agents started pouring out of the vehicles as his new wife, Sonia Espinoza Arriaga, pulled into the driveway after taking her 16-year-old son to high school.

Espinoza Arriaga and her three children — ages 18, 16 and 5 — were being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

News of their detention kindled instant outrage in Anchorage, where clergy members gathered to decry the idea of a kindergartner in immigration detention, a lawyer furiously worked to free the family, and Sanchez-Ramos tried in vain to track his family's whereabouts.

A harrowing 36 hours later, the mother would be deported and standing in Mexico with her two youngest children.

Her oldest son, 18, remains at the Anchorage jail.

The family's detention portends the arrival of harsher tactics by ICE in Alaska, said immigration attorney Lara Nations.

"I think this case means a major departure from previous norms here," said Nations, who is representing the family. "I have never seen an elementary-aged kid in ICE custody here. Once we start arresting young children, it feels like anything is on the table."

Sanchez-Ramos was born in Seward and is part of the family that opened Don Jose's Mexican Restaurant, with several locations in Southcentral Alaska. His parents "lived the American dream," he said.

In recent years, he worked in restaurants in the Soldotna area. That's where he met Espinoza Arriaga, who had come to Alaska around 2023.

He knew she was from Mexico and had come to the U.S. seeking asylum from violence in her home state of Jalisco, as well as fear of a past romantic partner. They worked together at McDonald's, along with her two oldest boys.

After long days at the restaurant, Espinoza Arriaga always cooked from scratch and made everyone sit around the table for a proper family dinner, he said.

They married at a courthouse ceremony in Soldotna on Feb. 5, with Sanchez-Ramos wearing cowboy boots and a cowboy hat and Espinoza Arriaga in a short white dress and sparkling headband.

Espinoza Arriaga had applied for asylum when she entered the United States and had been attending court dates, according to Nations, her attorney. She had missed a January hearing, understanding it to be in June. That put her in line to be deported.

"When someone does not show up to their hearing, they get an order of removal in absentia," Nations said. "The asylum case was extinguished by the removal order."

Marrying a U.S. citizen doesn't automatically confer citizenship benefits, Nations said. Once you marry a citizen, they have to petition for you and then apply for a green card. Espinoza Arriaga and Sanchez-Ramos hadn't had time to do any of that.

Sanchez-Ramos knew a letter had come sometime in January advising that she had missed a court date, but also saying it would be 90 days before any immigration action such as deportation would happen. His wife was in regular contact with an attorney on her asylum case, he said.

Even as stories about ICE raids in cities around the country made headlines, they didn't feel the same pressure in Alaska, which has had relatively low numbers of detentions — though still far more than before a Trump administration immigration crackdown that began a year ago.

But on Tuesday morning, ICE was pulling Sanchez-Ramos' wife out of their car. The men were masked up and wearing tactical gear. There were at least a dozen of them, he said.

"They surrounded her, and she started screaming," he said.

The agents handcuffed Sanchez-Ramos and asked about other children in the house.

Espinoza Arriaga's oldest son Alexis came out holding the 5-year-old, who had been getting ready for school and wasn't wearing socks or shoes yet. He was taken from his brother's arms by the officers, and began "crying and screaming and asking for mom, or (his brother) or me," Sanchez-Ramos said.

"They're like hurry, hurry," he said. "And I'm like, calm down, I'm trying to be translator and also keep the peace with the boys because they're upset, they're crying, they're scared," he said. "I'm also trying to hide my fear because here they are, my family getting ripped from me."

The 16-year-old was handcuffed and put in one car, and the 5-year-old joined his mother in another vehicle.

Eventually, Sanchez-Ramos was allowed in the house and told to pack an overnight bag for those being detained. He scrambled around trying to figure out what to pack. How long would they be detained? Where were they going?

Sanchez-Ramos says the immigration officers allowed him to drive to Soldotna High School and pull his 16-year-old stepson out of class. He texted the boy and told him to try to say goodbye to his girlfriend because he might be going away for a while.

As soon as the boy saw him, "you could see him just go white," Sanchez-Ramos said. "And he was just sad and crying there in school, and on the way out he was holding on to me really tight."

Sanchez-Ramos drove the boy, as he had been instructed, to the Alaska State Troopers post in Soldotna, where the others were already detained.

He followed them to Anchorage. On the drive, he started making calls to a lawyer representing Sonia in her immigration case. He learned that Sonia, the 16-year-old and the 5-year-old would be housed at a hotel, under guard by federal agents.

Alexis, the 18-year-old, was sent to the Anchorage jail, where adult immigration detainees are held, usually before being transferred to a federal detention center Outside.

Nations had filed a habeas corpus petition with the U.S. District Court of Alaska asking for the family not to be transferred out of state, and to be let out of detention.

A federal judge denied the petition late Tuesday afternoon.

In the past, Alaska's sparse population and relatively small number of federal immigration agents have meant ICE has largely — but not entirely — focused arrests and detentions on adults with existing criminal matters not related to their immigration status.

A spokesperson for ICE had not answered questions about Espinoza Arriaga's case as of Thursday morning. But in other cases, Department of Homeland Security officials have said detaining young children alongside their parents follows the law.

The family's sudden seizure and deportation has galvanized public attention.

In Juneau, the House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing on the detainment of children by ICE in Alaska on Monday from 1-3 p.m. A vigil for the family is planned from 5-6 p.m. Monday at St. John Methodist Church in Anchorage.

Late Tuesday night, Sanchez-Ramos heard his phone buzz.

It was his wife. She and the younger children were being put on a flight somewhere. Espinoza Arriaga, who doesn't speak English, said she didn't know where they were going.

By Wednesday, Sanchez-Ramos had been searching the internet in rising panic for a sign as to where his wife and younger stepchildren had been taken. He looked at an ICE website that allows you to locate someone in custody.

Under Sonia's name, it said only "in ICE custody," he said. "It says 'contact this phone number.' I call it. And believe it or not, it goes to an answering machine."

Hours later, he still didn't know. Were they in one of the large family detention centers in Texas, where people sometimes stay for months and even years? Where would a 5-year-old be sent to live in a jail-like facility?

He met a reporter at the Loussac Library on Wednesday afternoon and talked about what he would do if his wife and her children were sent back to Mexico. He would probably work and save enough money to join them.

The phone buzzed again as Sanchez-Ramos sat at the library thumbing through photos of their wedding, snowman making and summer nights around a campfire. He answered the unknown number.

"Sonia?" he said.

Not even 48 hours after she had been taken into ICE custody, his wife and the younger boys had been deported.

She was in Mexico.

Typically, according to Nations, the government flies people being deported to San Diego and then drives them across the border.

Sanchez-Ramos tried to write down details she was telling him, and to patch lawyers through on the call. She could stay in a dorm with the children for a day or two, he gathered, but after that would have to go back to Jalisco.

Alexis, the 18-year-old, was not with them. He was in the jail in Anchorage.

Sanchez-Ramos looked out the window at the falling snow in Anchorage and talked to her in Spanish for a long while.

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