Updated: Communities hold vigils for deported Soldotna family
Published 1:30 am Tuesday, February 24, 2026
The arrest and deportation of a Soldotna mother and her three children last week by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency have sparked community outcry across the state.
Over 50 people attended a vigil for Sonia Espinoza Arriaga and her family on Wednesday in front of the Homer United Methodist Church, carrying signs of support and battery-powered candles. The event was organized by the Homer United Methodist Church Civic Engagement Group.
Marcia Kuszmaul, one of the lead organizers of Wednesday’s vigil, said it was timed to occur in solidarity with the “Faithful Resistance” event, a national vigil held in Washington, D.C., which included a peaceful procession to the U.S. Capitol building at 11 a.m. Eastern Standard Time and visits to Congressional leaders.
“The theme of our (local) vigil is faithful resistance, seeking justice for immigrants and the humane treatment of immigrants, their rights to due process,” Kuszmaul said Tuesday. “We have had an incident on the Kenai (Peninsula) and we wanted to focus on support for that family. We want to acknowledge what’s going on locally, what’s going on statewide, and support the national event.”
Home resident Gary Lyon said at the beginning of the event that in addition to bringing attention to the abduction of the Arriaga-Ramos family, the vigil was also an opportunity for the community to bear witness to other people who have been murdered or taken by ICE, including Ruben Ray Martinez, who was fatally shot by a federal immigration officer last year, and Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed in Minneapolis in January.
“We are here to remember that our call … for those of us who are humans in this world (is) to love our neighbor,” HUMC Reverend Blake Langston said during the vigil. “The Arriaga-Ramos family are our neighbors.”
Langston recounted the story of the Good Samaritan, which appears in Luke 10 in the Bible, who showed compassion to a man beaten and left to die in a ditch.
“The question was asked, ‘Who is this man’s neighbor?’ The answer was, the one who showed compassion. What you do here today … is a demonstration of your compassion and the honoring of the humanity … of those who have been abducted, of those who have been taken, whose voices have been silenced,” he said. “But our voices will not be silenced, because we do love our neighbors. We love our communities, and our desire is to walk closer together. So let this be a reminder … that there are people in this world with compassion, and our desire is to grow closer to each other.
“Our thoughts and our prayers are not the only things that go out, but our actions, our lives and our love go out as well today.”
Another vigil in support of Arriaga and her family will be held at Soldotna Creek Park on Sunday, March 1 at 7 p.m. This event is organized by Many Voices Alaska, Rev. Meredith Harber with Christ Lutheran Church in Soldotna, and retired pastor Karen Martin-Tichenor, who previously served at the Soldotna United Methodist Church.
Susie Smalley, one of the co-founders of Many Voices, said via email Wednesday that the idea for the vigil came out of a community gathering held at Christ Lutheran Church on Friday, where more than 100 people were in attendance.
“We shared and learned and planned for this event and for what we can do to continue working in our community for the rights of everyone,” she wrote.
The community is welcomed to attend Sunday’s flameless “candlelight” vigil in Soldotna; find more information on the event Facebook page.
A continuing story
The Anchorage Daily News reported Tuesday, Feb. 17, that Arriaga and her three children, ages 18, 16 and 5, were arrested that day and taken to Anchorage. Arriaga, who is from Mexico and came to Alaska in 2023 seeking asylum from cartel violence and a past partner, is married to Alexander Sanchez-Ramos, a U.S. citizen and Alaska resident born in Seward. Neither she nor any of her children have criminal records.
A Feb. 19 press release from the Alaska House Majority Coalition stated that Arriaga had been in civil immigration proceedings after declaring herself and her children at the border upon entering the U.S. in 2023. ADN also reported that Arriaga missed an immigration hearing in January, understanding it to be scheduled for June, which put her in line for deportation.
Lara Nations, an immigration attorney representing Arriaga and her children, said last Thursday that she had filed a habeas corpus petition on Feb. 17 that “is still pending.” A motion to reopen Arriaga’s immigration court proceedings is also pending.
Reverend Michael Burke, rector and senior pastor at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Anchorage, was one of several church leaders from the Alaska Christian Conference — a statewide network of faith leaders representing numerous denominations, for which Burke serves as president — who organized an emergency press conference last Tuesday afternoon to break the story to the media and alert Alaskans to what they “believe to be a grave moral crisis in America today.”
“We were told publicly that the policy was to arrest the worst of the worst — murderers and rapists, we were told — and yet here we are, the arrest of a 5-year-old kindergartener and detention of a family with no known criminal history,” he said in an interview last Thursday. “How can this be the case in America today? Is this the best way that we can enforce our nation’s laws?”
Burke wrote in an email to Homer News that the day after they were taken into custody, Arriaga and her two minor children were removed from Alaska and flown to San Diego, where they were “immediately” transported across the Mexico-United States border to a federal processing center in Tijuana. He also said that church leaders believed this case is the first instance in which young children have been taken into ICE custody in the state.
“It is not our intent to take issue with any particular immigration laws — we do believe the immigration laws of the nation should be enforced, but this is not the kind of enforcement that is in keeping with a long history of the American respect of rule and law and basic decency and integrity,” Burke said. “It undermines and erodes public confidence in the rule of law and federal officers as agents of that law, and pits the community against one another.
“We think that this could have been handled in any number of other ways, and we are outraged that armed federal officers in full tactical gear confronted and took a family away from our very midst … we as clergy felt a moral obligation to call the attention of the community to this.”
Additional reporting by the ADN says that Arriaga’s 18-year-old son, who was not deported to Mexico with his family but remained in custody at the Anchorage jail, was transferred on Friday to an ICE detention facility in Tacoma, Washington. Nicolas Olano, also an immigration attorney at Nations Law Group, confirmed Wednesday that, according to the ICE Online Detainee Locator System, Alexis Arriaga is still in Washington and, as of press time, had not been deported to Mexico.
Olano, who has been practicing immigration law since 2002, said that the Arriaga family’s case was the “fastest ever” physical deportation he’s ever seen take place.
“It took less than 36 hours from the moment that these people were arrested for them to be in Mexico. That is unheard of,” he said, adding that he has received letters from other attorney practicing immigration law stating the same. “Generally, people are begging to be deported faster because detention is so horrible. This was clearly done so we couldn’t file things in time.”
Olano also confirmed that Arriaga and her two minor children are currently in Jalisco state in Mexico, which has been experiencing street violence since Sunday following the death of a notorious drug cartel leader at the hands of the Mexican government.
“She’s scared and terrified of what’s going on,” he said.
Representatives from ICE have not responded to a request for comment by Homer News as of press time.
Alaska legislators reacted to the family’s arrest and deportation last week and brought the matter to the attention of Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, during his annual address to a joint session of the House and Senate.
“As Senator Sullivan told Rep. Alyse Galvin after his speech to the Legislature yesterday, he is looking into the matter and he and his team have contacted senior level officials at the Department of Homeland Security to gather all of the facts regarding the situation,” Devyn Shea, Sullivan’s press secretary, wrote in an email to the Homer News on Feb. 19.
Joe Plesha, communications director for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, wrote in an email on Friday that Murkowski is aware of the situation and her office is actively reaching out to DHS to gather more information about the case.
“The administration has repeatedly stated that its enforcement strategy is focused on targeting individuals with violent criminal records — a goal Senator Murkowski and many Americans support. However, based on what is currently known, it does not appear that this mother or her three children pose a danger to their community,” he wrote. “As the debate around ICE reform continues to take shape, Senator Murkowski remains focused on ensuring that due process is upheld for everyone under the law.”
The Alaska House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the detainment of minors in Alaska by ICE on Monday. A vigil for the family was also held in Anchorage Monday evening.
