An Alaska Native corporation’s shareholders are questioning its subsidiary’s lucrative government contracts for migrant detention, while the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown continues.
Akima, a subsidiary of northwest Alaska’s NANA Regional Corp., has faced accusations in national news stories about the poor treatment of migrants at detention facilities it runs. Now, a small but vocal group among NANA’s 15,000 Iñupiaq shareholders want the company to get out of the migrant detention business.
One recent story in the Guardian included a federal inspector’s report of excessive force used on a man detained at an Akima-run center in Texas and poor living conditions at the facility. Another story by USA Today detailed how detained women on buses in Florida were forced to urinate on the floor on their way to an Akima facility, where they were packed into cells and did not have easy access to drinking water. One woman held there told USA Today she wasn’t fed anything for 36 hours.
Akima’s contract to run an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has also drawn scrutiny.
Jackie Qataliña Schaeffer is a former NANA board member who helped craft a recent survey of her fellow shareholders. She said there had been a lack of transparency from NANA leadership about the ICE contracts, and the survey was meant to gauge how the shareholders felt about the contracts after the recent news about Akima-run facilities.
While a minority of the survey respondents said they supported the contracts or weren’t sure how they felt about them, Schaeffer was unequivocal in her opposition.
“We are Iñupiaq, from the northwest Arctic, that are founded on Iñupiat illitqusait, which is our foundation of who we are,” she said. “And those values do not align with any of this type of work.”
'Not all money is good money'
The survey circulated on Facebook, and Schaeffer said all of those who responded were verified to be NANA shareholders. More than three-quarters of the roughly 100 respondents said their corporation should not allow its subsidiaries to provide detention services for ICE.
“There must (be) and are other ways to make money in a more positive way for humanity’s sake,” wrote one survey respondent.
“If we want to continue to say we treat people with dignity and respect we must immediately end all relations with ICE and detention centers,” wrote another.
“Not all money is good money,” someone else wrote.
NANA’s communications staff and executive leadership team did not respond to multiple requests for comment this week. The chair of its board of directors declined to comment.
At a recent shareholder meeting, NANA’s leaders disagreed with the notion that Akima should get out of the migrant detention business.
Schaeffer and two other shareholders wrote and distributed the survey, and another shareholder presented the results at the meeting.
Two shareholders who wanted to remain anonymous, because they feared retribution from the corporation, said the chair of NANA’s board of directors, Piquk Linda Lee, defended Akima at the meeting and said staff at the detention centers had NANA’s Iñupiaq values in mind.
The shareholders said Lee also invoked Iñupiat illitqusait – which means “those things that make us who we are” in Iñupiaq – and said NANA and Akima would never treat anyone badly.
“Our employees are trained to recognize the difficulties individuals face and treat them as they would want their family members treated,” reads a slide NANA leadership shared at the meeting.
Led by chief executive Bill Monet, who is also NANA’s chief operating officer, Akima and its subsidiaries comprise NANA’s federal contracting branch. They generate a majority of the Alaska Native corporation’s overall profits, according to information presented at the shareholder meeting. Charts showed that Akima’s revenue each year is often higher than that of NANA’s Red Dog Mine, one of the world’s largest zinc mines, located in northwest Alaska.
Akima brought in about $2.2 billion last year, NANA executives told shareholders at the meeting.
'Let’s support them as they support us'
Government contracting rules consider Alaska Native corporations to be small businesses, so they have an easier path to getting the contracts. NANA is not the only Alaska Native corporation that has subsidiaries with ICE contracts, but the scope of each corporation’s involvement is difficult to understand because of the many subsidiaries nested within each other. For example, within Akima itself are more than 40 companies, each aimed at getting contracts to provide different government services.
Some of NANA’s shareholders, who are technically the corporation’s owners, were not aware of Akima’s ICE contracts. A little more than half of those who responded to the survey said they did not know the NANA subsidiary was involved in migrant detention.
Still, others who responded to the survey were aware of the contracts and unbothered by the recent news reports, which some called “fake news.” One respondent said the survey questions were based on a prejudiced view of ICE, law enforcement, contracting and the current presidential administration.
“As a NANA shareholder, I am impressed and proud of the work Akima does and trust that Akima employees do their best,” the survey respondent wrote. “Let’s support them as they support us.”
Along with issuing dividends twice a year, NANA helps its shareholders with things like supporting their travel for healthcare, providing scholarships for post-secondary education and awarding grants for economic development in villages.
But Schaeffer, the former NANA board member who helped create and distribute the survey, said she couldn’t understand the viewpoint that shareholders should be proud of what Akima is doing or that the company shared NANA’s Iñupiaq values.
“I honestly can't be in the skin of those people who say those things,” she said.
There’s a certain grim irony to the detentions and deportations, Schaeffer said, noting that Indigenous people were the original occupants of what became the United States.
“All the rest of America was founded on immigration. Every single person who's not Indigenous to this land is an immigrant, or they come from immigrants,” she said. “How do you decipher who you choose to send away? The whole concern here is that these are inhumane behaviors coming from our contractors. Regardless, you're choosing money over humane situations, so money over people.”
