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Juneau man in ICE custody after being arrested for drunk driving
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
Mario Alberto Trejo Reynoso, 27, is in federal custody on an immigration violation after being arrested by Juneau police for driving while intoxicated in September.
Juneau Police Department Chief Derek Bos said a report was made of a suspicious vehicle parked in the driveway of a residence on Sept. 27. A police bulletin shows the incident occurred in the area of Stephen Richards Memorial Drive in the Mendenhall Valley.
“The homeowner reported that they did not know the driver, nor recognize the vehicle. They also reported that the driver appeared to be intoxicated, slumping over the steering wheel of the vehicle,” Bos wrote in an email Thursday. “JPD officers responded to the residence, locating the vehicle still in the driveway, and contacted the driver and sole occupant, who was later identified as Reynoso. After the on-scene investigation and later submitting to a breath test that demonstrated his blood alcohol content was over the legal limit, Reynoso was arrested and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol.”
He was transferred to Lemon Creek Correctional Center. After being turned over to DOC custody, the correctional center contacted ICE and Reynoso was subsequently placed on a federal detainer.
He was previously cited by Juneau police for driving without a valid license in June and then released, according to court records.
Mexico is his country of origin. He was in the custody of the Alaska Department of Corrections from Sept. 27 to Sunday.
Reynoso moved from Lemon Creek to the Anchorage Correctional Complex on Sept. 30, according to Betsy Holley, a DOC spokesperson.
As of Thursday, Reynoso is at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Washington, according to the U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement database.
Holley wrote in an email Thursday to the Juneau Independent that one person remains on hold at the Anchorage Correctional Complex: Honorio Barreto from Senegal. Alaska DOC has an agreement with ICE to hold immigration detainees on civil charges.
Reynoso is at least the sixth Juneau resident to be detained since the beginning of 2025. Additionally, a man from Sitka was held at Lemon Creek in February 2026 and then discharged from DOC the same month. Most of the arrests have resulted in transfers to federal custody outside of Alaska.
Once they are in federal custody, the Juneau residents can become difficult to track.
In July, U.S. Border Patrol officials detained a 52-year-old man in Juneau named Jose Manuel Rivera-Rivera. Holley said he didn’t declare a country of origin. After his arrest, the Independent received phone calls from his friends, saying they were upset because Rivera-Rivera is not a criminal and he provided for his family.
He was placed on a federal hold and discharged out of DOC’s system on Aug. 4, Holley said. During his arrest, local U.S. Border Patrol agents requested assistance from JPD to “de-escalate the incident,” Bos said at the time. Rivera-Rivera and Reynoso have no record of criminal charges in the Alaska court system’s database or federally.
Some states, such as Florida, have laws requiring local law enforcement to collaborate with ICE. Alaska is not one of them and instead defines cooperation as voluntary. JPD doesn’t have an official partnership with ICE or CBP that allows them to act on behalf of federal officers and is not pursuing an agreement, Bos said.
After Rivera-Rivera’s removal from Juneau, the Independent talked with Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney based in Anchorage. She said Customs and Border Patrol agents typically make civil arrests for immigration violations.
“The immigration agents in Alaska have been very active, trying to find people to arrest because they’re trying to get their quota numbers up,” Stock said during an August interview.
Stock said there was an uptick in arrests nationwide in July and Alaska is not immune to these trends. ICE arrested more than 46,000 people in July.
“One of them was the attorney for the state of Alaska,” she said. “He had no criminal record. They also started arresting immigrants who arrive at the (Ted Stevens Anchorage International) airport looking for jobs in Alaska, even though they’re legal and they’re allowed to work.”
Stock said she’s been watching incidents like this happen where “nobody who got arrested had committed a crime.”
A majority of the immigrants arrested in July were people who were accused of violating civil immigration laws, but who had not been charged with or convicted of a crime, a New York Times analysis of federal data shows.
“What I’m seeing sometimes is people are pulled over on a traffic violation, and it could be the passenger in the vehicle that gets arrested, and they haven’t done anything wrong at all,” Stock said. “Maybe the driver allegedly did something, but also they’re not even committing traffic violations in some cases. It’s just ICE has a database of people they're trying to arrest, and they have surveillance going on now, so they know where their cars are, and they know to pull them over because there’s somebody in the car that they think has violated immigration law.”
Her account matches reports in national news that instead of highly publicized immigration crackdowns, agents are turning to traffic stops and airport arrests.
In July, the White House pushed ICE to hit a target of 2,000 arrests per day. As of October, the goal was 3,000 per day, according to CNN. Senior Trump officials have repeatedly denied that agents are required to meet arrest quotas, describing the push as a goal, the article states.
An annual refugee picnic, usually held in the fall by local sponsors of the Juneau Refugee Resettlement, did not take place this year due to organizers traveling.
“Also, it might not be a good idea to gather in groups right now,” wrote Joyanne Bloom, a local sponsor, in an email.
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.
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