February 26, 2026, Seward Folly Editorial by Bob Barnwell

The arrest of Sonia Espinoza Arriaga and her children, ages 5, 16, and 18, in Soldotna recently brought our nation’s immigration policy very close to home, and left many uneasy.  

Sonia Espinoza Arriaga, originally from Jalisco, Mexico, arrived in Alaska in 2023. She applied for asylum, citing violence from her domestic partner and within her community. 

Multiple ICE vehicles and a score of agents arrested her, along with her five-year-old and her sixteen-year-old. They were driven to Anchorage, and 36 hours later, they were back in Mexico, leaving her new husband alone in Soldotna. The 18-year-old was transferred to an ICE facility in Washington state. 

Ms. Arriaga had to be in a desperate situation to make the journey to Soldotna three years ago, with little English and three children. It’s hard to imagine what drove her to such a decision, but it certainly took enormous initiative and courage. She made it and built a new life, getting married, working at McDonald’s, and being busy with the day-to-day routine of modern life. That all changed in an instant: she’s now back in her country, a single woman with two innocent children, re-entering a volatile situation she fled three years ago. 

No one in the family had a criminal record. Her husband, Alexander Sanchez-Ramos was born in Seward. His family owned the Don Jose’s Restaurant chain with restaurants in Soldotna, Homer, and Anchorage.  

Ms. Arriaga did miss her court date, and according to ICE, she was informed of her impending deportation. But that response seems disproportionate to the offense of missing a court appearance, leaving a helpless family in ruins. And we, as taxpayers, are paying for these expensive operations. 

The operation involved multiple officers and vehicles from Anchorage, flights to California, and an orchestrated drive across the border to drop her and her children off.  And her 18-year-old, barely an adult, is in a detention facility in the Lower 48. 

Secure international borders are necessary – our country can’t absorb endless, desperate refugees. There must be a thoughtful policy and systems to limit immigration. But arrests like these, terrorizing the most vulnerable, are not about securing borders. They’re about sending a message to the world. 

That message is that our country is brutal and unpredictable. This isn’t thoughtful or humane; it’s acting like a bully. Homeland Security has spent billions of dollars to increase its capacity for incarcerating detainees twofold. In less than a year, they are capable of detaining almost 100,000 people. If they’re deporting families like the Arriagas, why does the country need such vast centers of incarceration? 

I’ve lived in autocratic countries and understand the desperation that drives the Arriagas from their home. This feels much too much like my time in Venezuela. I lived there for three years, during the early Chavez years. The autocrat was just showing his true colors when my wife and I and our three children left Alaska to teach in a private international school. The president nationalized oil companies, clamped down on the free press, silenced the courts, and filled Congress with his cronies. He retrofitted large buildings as detention centers and filled them with his political opponents. People fled to countries around the world. Venezuela is a shell of a once-thriving democracy.

Our country was founded on immigrants. It’s based on the rule of law. It’s a beacon of hope for the world. We don’t have to destroy that hope and decency in the world. We can come together and build a system that projects order, not fear and brutality.  

There’s a portion of the poem “The New Colossus” at the base of the Statue of Liberty, a beacon of that hope projected for almost 150 years, that we all know: 

 “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.”

This was written in the 1880s, and, looking back from our vantage point, it might seem naive. But my family has strong Irish roots that benefited from that generosity. America’s compassion saved millions of lives, not just the Irish. Countless refugees have created the backbone of our nation in the last 250 years, and beyond. Our identity is intimately wrapped up in this commitment to provide hope in the world. It also helped build an economically successful nation. 

I’m not ready to leave that hope and decency behind. I believe we are compassionate and intelligent enough to come up with a solution that doesn’t prey on the most vulnerable during these difficult times. Our current immigration policy doesn’t reflect who we are and must change.