Venezuelan family in Juneau fears asylum case freeze by Trump will force return to country he’s attacking
- Mark Sabbatini
- Dec 6, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Dec 6, 2025
Couple and their daughter arrived in U.S. legally last year; mother says her husband faces ‘certain death’ if deported
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
(Editor’s note: Members of the family in this story are referred to by pseudonyms since, while in the U.S. legally, they are potential targets for deportation by the Trump administration.)
The United States government is telling the world to stay away from Venezuela, so Isabella wonders why there’s an eagerness to send her family back to a situation there that would result in "certain death for my husband."
The couple and their daughter entered the U.S. legally through the asylum process in May of 2024, but have been subject to uncertainty about the revocation of that status since President Donald Trump began his second term in January of this year. A week ago, he froze all asylum cases as part of an accelerated set of enforcement actions targeting people from other countries living in the U.S., legally or illegally.
The freeze on asylum cases affects Isabella's family directly, putting them at risk of immediate deportation regardless of their legal status, she stated in an email interview with the Juneau Independent this week, which relied on computer-assisted translation between Spanish and English. She stated their case had been set for review by a judge prior to Trump’s order.
"We are people who have no criminal record whatsoever, not even a traffic violation," she wrote. "We are Christian families of good character, professionals, with dreams and a strong desire to continue working and striving in this country, but we are scared because we will surely also face the misfortune of being deported."
"In our case, returning to Venezuela means returning to certain death for my husband; I don't know if they will arrest me. I also know that my country's government is vindictive; anyone who speaks out against it suffers greatly. But unfortunately, I have nowhere else to go."
Dozens of other families in Juneau from countries experiencing unrest such as Ukraine and Haiti are also going through prolonged uncertainty and fear about their situations.
"We know there's a lot of people here," Maureen Hall, a Juneau Assembly member and participant in the local Sponsor Circle Program that assists with resettlement efforts, said in an interview Tuesday. "They're really scared and no one really knows what to do. It's a very cruel — and to be quite honest, stupid — approach to what they're doing because they're hurting our economy here in Alaska. These are good people, hard-working, very motivated."
Supporters of Trump’s approach say many foreigners in the U.S. are here under lax policies implemented during President Joe Biden’s term, and cite competition for jobs during the country’s tough economic times and criminal cases involving such people as justification for the enforcement actions taking place. Trump’s order freezing all asylum cases and other ramped-up restrictions occurred after two National Guard soldiers were shot in Washington, D.C., by a man officials said is an Afghan national.
A report published by The New York Times on Thursday states "less than 30 percent of the people arrested in any of these operations had been convicted of a crime, an analysis of the data shows, and a very small share had been convicted of a violent crime." Seven percent of immigrants arrested in major U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations between Jan. 20 and Oct. 15 had convictions for violent crimes, according to the article.
Isabella’s family fled Venezuela in the spring of 2023 after her husband posted a video publicly questioning actions by the company he worked for, which she said resulted in officials trying to seize him and the life-threatening situation he faces if forced to return. They spent more than a year getting to the U.S., facing lethal dangers along the way, such as navigating a jungle for many days on foot and being robbed repeatedly on buses.
"We suffered a lot to get here," Isabella wrote. "We escaped death from the Mexican cartels in the Darién jungle; we almost drowned. We fought, leaving everything behind to be here, and we entered legally through the then-government."
The family’s initial plans were to settle in Denver, but difficulties among the people they were supposed to meet there resulted in the suggestion from an acquaintance to consider Juneau, according to Isabella. She said the community here has been highly supportive since the family’s arrival.
"If there were a possibility of staying we would do so with great joy, as this city has given us security, tranquility, and peace, and all the people we know here are wonderful," she wrote.
Isabella said she and her husband have both been working at professional occupations in Juneau, aside from a period of a few months when she needed emergency medical care, and their daughter quickly learned English and is getting above-average grades at school.
But uncertainties about their status — and that of other foreigners in Juneau — have arisen throughout the year due to various actions by the Trump administration that in some cases have been put on hold by courts and/or rescinded. Isabella’s family received a “Notice of Termination of Parole” on April 11, for instance, but the U.S. Department of Homeland Security subsequently acknowledged some of the notices sent to hundreds of thousands of families were in error.
Just the rumors of enforcement action in Juneau has been enough to cause widespread fears. There was a rush of Alaska Natives seeking tribal IDs in January from the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, which advised its citizens to carry the IDs with them at all times. Rumors that immigration officials were in Juneau in July resulted in the postponement of an annual refugee picnic and some businesses pausing or scaling back operations when employees didn’t show up for work.
The Trump administration’s recent acceleration of immigration enforcement activities, including deploying troops to cities for mass roundup and arrest operations, extended into Alaska on Tuesday with the authorization by Gov. Mike Dunleavy of National Guard members to assist ICE officials at its Anchorage office.
“The Alaska National Guard members joined the guard to serve our nation," Grant Robinson, a Dunleavy spokesperson, stated in an email to the Alaska Beacon. "This support they are providing the Anchorage ICE office is in service of the nation."
In Juneau, questions about whether local tribal entities are contracting with a company participating in ICE enforcement were raised by public commenters during a meeting of Tlingit and Haida’s executive council on Thursday. A tribal spokesperson told the Juneau Independent on Friday no contracts with the company mentioned involve such operations.
Venezuela is particularly in Trump’s crosshairs right now, with a wave of military attacks on alleged "drug boats" that have killed dozens of people. He is also amassing troops in the area for what he said may be a land invasion "very soon" to topple the country’s leadership. Trump has said the strikes are targeting "narco-terrorists" who are a threat to the U.S., but numerous political leaders from both major parties and legal experts have said the killings are illegal and possibly involve war crimes.
Trump last Saturday said Venezuela's airspace should be considered "closed" — an authority he doesn’t have — and the federal government is issuing official warnings about the danger of traveling there, including signs at Juneau International Airport.
Isabella said she supports ousting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro since his authoritarian regime is a direct threat to her family and many other ordinary citizens there.
"This would help the country to restart and allow millions of Venezuelans who are still in the country to have a prosperous and secure life," she wrote.
"I am in daily contact with some relatives who are still in the country. They all assure me that the country is getting worse every day. The economy is unsustainable, insecurity is worsening daily, the economic situation is dire, food is a challenge, and the health situation is deteriorating every day. Many people are dying from diseases that could easily be treated with a good government — children and the elderly of all ages with incurable diseases that they cannot treat in any way."
However, that doesn’t extend to supporting Trump’s actions against boats coming from Venezuela and people from there now living in the U.S., Isabella added.
"I think that to attack a boat with people on board you have to be very sure they are carrying drugs," she wrote. "I don't think you can just blow them all up because of their positions."
Isabella said she stays in contact with other Venezuelans in the U.S. and many of them are now experiencing problems she fears her family may suffer.
"Many are waiting for asylum; one friend is in another city," she wrote. "He applied for asylum because he had an arrest warrant in Venezuela for belonging to a union opposed to the government, and he received the news that his application was denied. This really worries us because this man, like my husband, suffered serious abuses at the hands of the government and has ample evidence to support his claims, yet they are still rejecting cases like this."
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
