Some shareholders with one of Alaska’s largest Native corporations are speaking out about the company’s involvement in immigration detention centers overseen by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, including at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba.
NANA, the Alaska regional Native corporation for Northwest Alaska, gets most of its revenue from its Akima subsidiary. Akima owns dozens of companies which provide a variety of contracting services to the federal government. Some of the contracts include running migrant detention centers where government audits and groups have criticized safety and health standards.
One of those companies, Akima Infrastructure Protection, won a $163 million contract last year to run a migrant detention facility at U.S. Naval Station Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, known for the separate military prison used to hold terrorism suspects.
President Donald Trump, through an executive order, has ordered the detention facility to house up to 30,000 migrants. That has raised concerns among immigrant rights’ advocates who have sued the Trump administration and argued that keeping detainees at the remote center will be costly, and result in violations of due process rights and humane treatment.
Jackie Qataliña Schaeffer, a NANA shareholder and former board member for the corporation, said she was dismayed to read a recent article in The Guardian, an international news and investigative journalism website, that discusses the detention services contract and concerns about Akima facing accusations of civil rights abuses at some migrant detention centers.
She said this issue also cropped up in 2018, and she and other shareholders are disappointed to see that it is continuing.
Representatives with NANA, including NANA board chair Piquk Linda Lee and Akima chief executive Bill Monet, did not return phone calls or emails seeking comment for this story.
NANA reported $2.8 billion in revenues in 2024, and distributed nearly $47 million in revenue to shareholders, according to the corporation’s 2024 annual report.
Akima, headquartered in a suburb of Washington, D.C., accounted for close to 80% of the revenue, pulling in $2.2 billion, the report showed.
Contracts of Akima subsidiaries include creating immersive training environments for U.S. special forces and ensuring mission readiness for aircraft, including jumbo jets and Air Force One, the report says. The companies operate satellite systems for the Department of Defense, conduct environmental studies for the U.S. Geological Survey, and maintain critical infrastructure at NASA and other agencies, the report says.
Akima, which means “to win” in the Iñupiaq language, pursues benefits under a Small Business Administration program that provides contracting advantages to Alaska Native corporations, which have been designated as minority and economically disadvantaged. The program allows companies to team up with experienced partners, and pursue large, set-aside or sole-source contracting opportunities with the federal government.
The Guardian article said Akima Global Services runs multiple migrant detention centers, including a detention center in Buffalo, New York, and Krome North service processing center in Florida.
Akima Global Services was faulted for violating use-of-force standards in incidents at Krome North service processing center in Miami, in an audit last year by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General. Guards used inappropriate force on multiple occasions, including a chokehold on a detainee and pepper-spraying another detainee through a solitary confinement door slot, though the detainee didn’t threaten anyone, the audit found.
Schaeffer, along with two other NANA shareholders, organized a survey last month on Facebook to ask how shareholders viewed the corporation’s involvement in the detention centers.
“Mostly I’m wondering why we’d even be in this line of work because it goes against everything we are as Iñupiaq,” Schaeffer said, referring to traditional Iñupiaq values.
By far, most who responded to the survey said NANA should not let its subsidiaries provide those services. A small minority said it should.
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