An immigrant seeking asylum in Anchorage was arrested outside the restaurant where he worked and detained by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials earlier this month.
ICE officials said they detained Santiago “Diego” Martinez, 30, for having a drunken driving conviction. However, his attorney said ICE admitted they made a mistake – Martinez does not have a criminal conviction – but he remained in custody as of Monday.
It was the morning of Aug. 11 that Jennifer Choi got a call from Martinez’s girlfriend, who said he needed help. Choi went behind her restaurant, Sushi Motto, and saw ICE officers detaining Martinez.
“So when I go, Diego was in the car,” Choi said. “And then I said, ‘OK, what's going on?’ They say he don't have a green card. I tell them, he has a green card. He has a green card. I tell them, like two, three times, but they said, ‘We have to take him.’”
Martinez had worked for Choi for more than five years as a sushi chef. She said he was a great employee.
“He has a good heart,” Choi said. “He helped, even though he’s a sushi chef, he helped in the kitchen, dishwash, whatever needed help. He did everything. He never complained.”
Martinez is a Mexican national who was in the country illegally, ICE spokeswoman Christine Cuttita said in an email. ICE officials first encountered Martinez in 2019 when he entered the country and was arrested by airport police, Cuttita said. His case was dismissed by a judge in 2022 for “prosecutorial discretion.”
Margaret Stock, Martinez’s attorney, said Martinez is an Indigenous person from Mexico and was seeking asylum in the United States. The charges for his initial immigration arrest were dismissed, because the judge ruled he had a valid asylum case, Stock said.
“He does have a very good reason not to return,” Stock said. “I mean, people in the family have been killed and murdered.”
It’s not uncommon for asylum cases to take years to resolve, she said.
Cuttita with ICE wrote that Martinez, “jeopardized any legal privilege to remain in the United States when he was arrested by the Anchorage Police Department on Nov. 12, 2024, for driving under the influence.”
But the charges were thrown out, Stock said, and Martinez doesn’t have a drunken driving conviction on his record.
“I talked to the ICE people, and they were operating on misinformation that he had a DWI conviction, which he doesn't have,” Stock said. “But they claim that was the reason, on the telephone to me, that they were arresting him, was that he had a DWI conviction.”
Stock said the ICE officials told her they made a mistake arresting Martinez, since he doesn’t have a drunken driving conviction, but they still won’t release him.
“They told me that once they grab somebody, they're not allowed to release him anymore,” Stock said. “And they say that this is a new rule that has been made up by the DHS leadership, that people who are pending asylum, they can just grab them anytime and put them in detention.”
Cuttita said that convictions and arrests can both jeopardize someone’s immigration status. But Stock said the Department of Homeland Security isn’t following the law.
“I think it's illegal and it's un-American,” Stock said. “It's unconstitutional, and then on top of it, there's obviously errors in the system. So how can we trust the Department of Homeland Security when they make these kinds of egregious errors all the time?”
For now, it remains unclear if Martinez will be deported.
Stock said she was able to meet with Martinez when he was being held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, but the opportunities were limited.
“He was freezing cold and shivering while he was talking to me,” Stock said. “He said it's freezing in there, and then he also told me that they would only let him make one phone call a day. They've denied me access to speak with him because they have special rules that attorneys aren't allowed to go in there for huge chunks of the day. You know, they have hours that are off-limits to attorneys.”
Those rules, Stock said, contradict what ICE’s website says about the Anchorage Correctional Complex, that attorneys can access clients from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day.
Martinez was transferred to a detention center in Tacoma, and Stock is there, too, working to get him released. But she said she was worried that the center will have similarly harsh conditions and the same lack of access as the Anchorage jail.
Meanwhile, Choi, Martinez’s boss, said she’s concerned about how his detention will impact her business and her employees.
“Everybody is getting sad, like, depressed, I think,” Choi said. “And, you know, some people, they don't even want to work, even though they have a green card. You know, they’re just scared to work.”
Choi said she’s also pitching in to try to get Martinez back to Alaska.
