The Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly is pushing for the return of a Fairbanks woman being held at an immigration detention center in the Lower 48.
The Assembly adopted a resolution Thursday that urges Alaska’s congressional delegation to advocate for the release of 42-year-old Atcharee Buntow while her immigration status is worked out.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents detained Buntow, who’s originally from Thailand, in early August. According to her family, the agents were driving unmarked vehicles and pulled over Buntow while she was on her way to get groceries. An online ICE database shows Buntow is in custody at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington.
Assemblymembers Scott Crass and Kristan Kelly introduced the resolution Thursday. Crass said it’s about promoting fairness and due process.
“It’s about ensuring that the law is enforced fairly, transparently and humanely,” he said. “It’s about protecting local families, and strengthening the trust in government and ensuring the people of Fairbanks are treated with dignity.”
Buntow’s family says she moved to the United States more than three decades ago, when she was 11 years old, and has been living in Fairbanks for about 15 years. She has a husband, six children and is the daughter of the owner of a local Thai restaurant.
Buntow said the agents who detained her didn’t identify themselves until she was handcuffed and inside their truck, according to reporting from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. The News-Miner also reported in August that Buntow began the process of applying for a Green Card earlier this year.
On Thursday, Assemblymember Brett Rotermund expressed a concern that the resolution would set a precedent if similar cases arise in the Fairbanks area.
“If more folks are detained like this, are we then going to have to entertain everybody that comes through our doors?” he said.
But Kelly, the resolution cosponsor, said she hopes it does set a precedent. Kelly also said she thinks Buntow’s detainment highlights how Fairbanks can home in on an issue affecting one of its community members.
“What’s different here is that we’re a small enough town that we say, ‘No, that’s not fair. It’s not just. It’s cruel. It’s mean. And we are not those people, and we want her back,’” she said.
Buntow’s detainment triggered a protest in Fairbanks a couple weeks after it happened. That support for her release reverberated Thursday prior to the Assembly’s vote, with 14 people providing public comment on the resolution, a dozen in favor and two against.
“Terrorizing our neighbors and their children is absolutely unacceptable. So vote yes for this resolution,” Fairbanks resident Molly Murphy said. “If you choose not to pass this resolution, I, and this community, will consider you complicit and complacent in the federal government’s use of one of our own community members as a political pawn.”
Fairbanks resident Miguel Ramirez was one of the public commenters opposed to the measure. He thanked ICE for “doing their jobs properly,” and said his father was an immigrant who became a legal citizen.
“He did what was legally obligated to him by the law of the United States,” he said. “Again, this is the United States of America. We are a nation of laws.”
The Assembly ultimately adopted the resolution Thursday in a 7-2 vote. Assemblymember Barbara Haney was among the yes votes. But she said there are still some things that bother her “on both sides,” and she questioned why Buntow hasn’t become a citizen despite living in the country for more than 30 years.
“I’m just – that part baffles me,” she said. “But I also don’t like how this went down either.”
Rotermund and Assemblymember Tammie Wilson were the two no votes. Wilson also questioned why Buntow had yet to become a citizen and noted that she has a criminal history.
Court records show Buntow pleaded guilty in 2015 to two felony charges related to falsely claiming U.S. citizenship on Alaska Permanent Fund dividend applications. Wilson also pointed to a few misdemeanor convictions on Buntow’s record, and said she thinks that history may affect Buntow’s case.
Copies of the resolution will be sent to Alaska senators Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, and Congressman Nick Begich. Copies will also be sent to President Donald Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.