Jessica Sunigaq Ullrich was at home last week waiting for a contractor to come fix her countertops when she heard yelling outside. She stepped out to see what was happening.
“I was definitely concerned,” Ullrich said. “And it wasn't long after that I saw them walking this young man wearing a red hoodie towards a vehicle.”
The man Ullrich had hired is one of at least 56 people detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Alaska so far this year — more than the previous two years combined. There were a total of 13 ICE arrests in Alaska in 2024, while there were 20 in 2023, according to the Alaska Department of Corrections. The dramatic increase comes as the Trump administration intensifies its nationwide crackdown on immigration.
Some residents, like Ullrich, say the surge in arrests is deeply troubling and they’re stepping up to support detainees. Ullrich said while she had heard about ICE officers arresting people across the country, she was shocked to see a detention up close. She recorded it and posted the video to Facebook, where it was shared hundreds of times.
“It felt like I was watching a government-endorsed kidnapping, essentially,” Ullrich said. “And I couldn't believe, I didn't feel prepared for what I was witnessing in Anchorage, Alaska, in my neighborhood, in my front yard.”
Anchorage immigration attorney Nicholas Olano said he expects the number of ICE detentions in Alaska to balloon as the agency receives billions more in federal funding.
“This is the horrible and sad truth is that those pickups and those arrests are following the law as it is written,” Olano said. “And if we are shocked by this, we need to change the law.”
In the meantime, he said there are ways people can support detainees including following Ullrich’s example by recording arrests.
“That's great because we're holding everybody accountable,” Olano said. “These officers, we're making sure that they're doing their job right, that they're not pushing or abusing somebody.”
Olano said public advocacy is another way to garner support for detainees.
The day after Ullrich posted her video, she attended a shareholder meeting for the Bering Straits Regional Corporation. She told fellow shareholders about her concerns over the corporation’s investment in Global Precision Systems LLC, a company affiliated with several ICE detention centers in Texas and Arizona.
“I felt compelled to share what I witnessed,” Ullrich said, “and to ask at the annual meeting that was scheduled for the very next morning if we as shareholders and whether the board of directors could consider divesting from companies like this that are profiting off of what feels like the torment of human beings.”
Ullrich said she wonders if the topic of Native corporations divesting from detention centers should be raised at the Alaska Federation of Natives convention next week.
“I’ve been informed there are multiple Alaska Native corporations that are connected with detention centers,” Ullrich said. “And that's an issue, I feel like, in terms of that alignment with values and us ensuring that we're not part of the harm of our Indigenous relatives from Central and South America.”
Olano said financial support is another critical way to support detainees and their families. Since July, he has represented the family of Paola Guzman, a housecleaner who was detained by ICE in Anchorage and sent to a detention center in Tacoma, Wash. Guzman’s son, Aldo Coyotl, said his mother has lived in Alaska for more than 20 years and, one day in July, several cars barricaded her in as she parked, on her way to a cleaning job.
“Once you know it, all of them are around her,” Coyotl said. “And so she's just in her car, terrified, and when they knock on her window, they show that they already have a court order and that they have her warrant for her arrest.”
Olano said Guzman did not have proper immigration documents. He said ordinarily, people who have been detained for entering the U.S. unlawfully would be able to post a bond to get released, but he ran into issues trying to pay Guzman’s bond.
“We ran into a new policy by the Tacoma immigration judges of denying bond for people who had crossed the border in the United States at any point,” Olano said. “This was something completely new.”
Olano challenged the judge’s decision that Guzman couldn’t post her bond, and a court ruled in her favor last week. All the while, Olano said legal and other associated fees made the ordeal expensive.
“A call from the Tacoma Detention Center is $8 a minute,” Olanos said. “These rates are not even 1980s long distance rates. That's absurd.”
In order to help support Guzman, her friend Rebecca Rogers started a GoFundMe to help cover some of those fees. Rogers has known Guzman for more than 20 years, and said she’s a valuable community member.
“She was a hockey mom, a school mom, involved in her church,” Rogers said. “And I just grew to care for her very much.”
Rogers said she hopes that residents realize the hardships their fellow community members are going through.
“I think if people are paying attention, they realize that the people we care about, many of them who may not have their paperwork in place, are just vulnerable to a pretty vindictive, kind of crazy, insane system,” she said
The $16,000 raised in the online fundraiser, in part, helped to cover Guzman’s legal fees and bond.
Guzman was reunited with her family in Anchorage this week. Olano said Guzman will still have to appear before an immigration judge to hear her case, and he expects the process will take years.
