Lucrative ICE Detention Centers Bring Money—and Anger— to an Alaska Native Community

Nana Regional Corp. was supposed to honor Iñupiat values.
Some shareholders say it hasn’t. 

By Polly Mosendz, Michael Smith and Rachel Adams-Heard

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Lucrative ice detention centers bring money and anger to an
Alaska Native community. Nana Regional Corp. Was supposed to honor
in Yupiat values. Some shareholders say it hasn't. By polymosens
Michael Smith and Rachel Adams heard read aloud by Mark Leidorf.

(00:21):
Roswell Schaeffer Senior has had many lives in Kotsubu, Alaska,
a coastal town of about three thousand just north of
the Arctic Circle. He's been a commercial fisherman, a subsistence hunter,
and holder of just about every local political position mayor, councilman, judge.
Eventually he got the biggest gig in town. He took

(00:42):
over as president and chief executive officer of Nana Regional Corp,
an Alaska Native company of which he's one of more
than fifteen thousand Inupiak shareholders. From nineteen ninety to nineteen
ninety two, he ran one of the largest companies based
in a vast thirty eight thousand square mile region of
the remote Arctic, one with outsize cultural, historic, and economic

(01:04):
importance to the Inupiat people. Nana's state admission is to
improve the quality of life for our people by maximizing
economic growth while honoring core in Upiat principles, which include
treating people with dignity and respect. When Schaeffer was president,
Nana did that mostly by investing in Alaskan mining and

(01:24):
hospitality businesses that hired shareholders. He says he took pride
in the work that was a very different Nana. Through
several presidential administrations, the company has turned itself into a
large government contractor, with its biggest revenue generator run out
of an office park in a suburb of Washington, d C.
Nana's largest contracts, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year,

(01:48):
are with a Department of Defense, but over the past decade,
one of its fastest growing lines of government business is
with immigration and customs enforcement. Schaeffer now says Nana is
a band and in crucial values by taking an increasingly
large role in President Donald Trump's mass deportation drive. Nana's
federal contracting is done under its Akima division, whose operating

(02:12):
companies hold ice contracts to manage or provide security services
to a half dozen detention facilities across the lower forty
eight states. In Puerto Rico that includes the Akima managed
Chrome North Service Processing Center in Miami, which has seen
one of the most dramatic increases in people detained in
the second Trump administration. People there have said they've been

(02:33):
forced to sleep on floors and endure long waits for
food and medical care. Since the start of the year,
three people in ice custody have died after being detained
at Chrome. They're among the eighteen who've died in ice
custody nationwide through early October, more than died in all
of twenty twenty four, and the most since the COVID
nineteen pandemic raced through immigrant detention centers in twenty twenty.

(02:56):
The figure doesn't include two detained men who died in
a shooting targeting a Dallas ice facility last month. At
another Akima managed detention center near Buffalo, New York, federal
inspectors repeatedly found that guards used inappropriate force. In a lawsuit,
those detained there have alleged that they were subjected to
forced labor. Working for ICE really goes contrary to our values, absolutely,

(03:21):
says Schaeffer. Surrounded in his art studio by Christmas lights
and fireweed, a native Alaskan plant that grows neon purple
in the summer. Nana's board is not acknowledging that's what
they have, a company that mistreats people of color shareholders,
he fears, don't connect the dots together. That detention facilities
like that are against our principles are in Upiat values

(03:44):
that we live by, and that is to treat fellow
human beings with respect. Ice did not respond to requests
for comment for this article. NANA is one of twelve
for profit Alaska Native Regional corporations created in nineteen seventy
one by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The company
is able to secure its government contracts thanks to a

(04:05):
decade's old initiative to prop up small businesses and what
the federal government describes as socially and economically disadvantaged communities,
including Alaska Natives. Without that set aside program, NANA could
have to go up against private prison companies such as
Geo Group and Core Civic that operate the facilities holding

(04:25):
the majority of people in ice custody. The program is
a noteworthy example of a diversity and inclusion initiative that
survived under a presidential administration committed to purging such efforts.
The percentage of ice contracts set aside for these companies
grew slightly in twenty twenty five. Nana had two point
eight billion dollars in revenue last year, about eighty percent

(04:49):
of that from Akima, which has become the biggest recipient
of ice contracts issued under the program. The value of
Nana's ice contracts this year is approaching three hundred million dollars,
an increase of about one hundred million dollars over last year,
and with forty five billion dollars allocated for creating more
detention capacity under Trump's immigration drag net, Akima is in

(05:11):
a position to reap even more gains. Regardless of how
big Nana gets, it still qualifies for set aside contracts.
The company did not reply to a detailed list of
questions about its Okima operations. The company's shareholders receive a
regular dividend check. Nana has announced a fall dividend of
twenty dollars per share, following one of eight dollars and

(05:32):
five cents in the spring. About one point seventy five
million outstanding Nana shares are distributed among its more than
fifteen thousand shareholders. While the company doesn't disclose typical holdings.
That's a rough average of one hundred and seventeen shares
per shareholder, amounting to an annual dividend payout just shy
of thirty three hundred dollars. Some shareholders say the financial

(05:54):
payoff isn't worth the human toll. Yeah, we get some money,
but we also tarnish our culture are people, says David Leslie,
a shareholder who lives in Fairbanks. The company is complicit
in acts of violence, he says, and I can't pay
my rent. An informal Facebook poll in March about Nana's
ice contracts drew responses from around one hundred shareholders, the

(06:17):
majority of whom disapproved of the work. A few weeks
after the pole, the company posted a statement on its website.
It said Nana's detention facilities are subject to continuous oversight
and monitoring for the security and safety of everyone involved.
The NANA board chair PICUK Linda Lee, added in the
statement that the company has not deviated from its values

(06:39):
and noted it is limited in what we can share
publicly about specific customers and contracts. On the other side
of the continent, some forty three hundred miles from Katsubu
sits Chrome on the edge of Miami. ICE owns the
facility and Akima has operated it for more than a
decade under a contract valued at more than a half
billion dollars. Florida's law enforcement has been especially aggressive in

(07:03):
aiding Trump's immigration crackdown. As a result, Chrome has at
times been packed with more people than its official capacity allows.
In April, ICE gave Akima a contract worth roughly eighteen
million dollars for temporary housing services at Chrome. A report
released by Human Rights Watch in July determined that Akima

(07:24):
had repeatedly failed to provide minimally safe conditions. It was,
for example, holding female immigrants in areas designed for men,
without privacy barriers for toilets and access to showers. Akima
told Human Rights Watch it was unable to comment on
the specifics of our engagement. Several people detained at Chrome
and their lawyers told Bloomberg BusinessWeek that Okima's guards were

(07:47):
slow to respond to people in urgent need. Ukrainian war
refugee Maxim Chernak was one of those people. In Kiev
before the war. Chernyak liked to djay and Ski. He'd
come to the US in August twenty twenty four with
his partner Aksana Tarasyuk, who says they entered on humanitarian
visas in Florida. He worked as a delivery driver and

(08:09):
handyman until being arrested on a domestic violence charge. Tarasjuk
says it was nothing more than an argument that escalated
when a neighbor called the cops. Chernyak posted bail but
never left jail. He was picked up by ICE and
taken to Chrome on February third. Prior to his detention,
Chernyak had been relatively healthy at intake. Medical records show

(08:32):
a nurse at Chrome noted only that he had high
blood pressure. Healthcare at Chrome is provided by the ICE
Health Services Corps. Almost immediately his health began to fail,
he called Tarasyuk frequently pleading for help. Guards at Chrome
largely ignored his requests to see a doctor, he told her.
Chernyak said he spent his first few days in a

(08:53):
small holding room, windowless, without running water or proper sleeping
arrangements designed to keep people briefly for processing. On calls
with taras Zuk, he said he wasn't getting enough food
or water and couldn't sleep. He described feeling like his
body was breaking down. He was afraid he was going
to die. Taras Juk says about two weeks after Chernyak

(09:15):
first told guards he was ill, he began vomiting and
shaking as he lay in his bunk. According to his
medical records and eyewitness accounts, the guards didn't respond for
twenty to thirty minutes, according to those accounts. When they arrived,
the guards helped a nurse lower Chernyak from his bunk
into a wheelchair, but he shook so violently he couldn't
be held down. He slid out of the chair to

(09:37):
the floor, and finally they put him on a stretcher
for almost three hours, Chernyak's symptoms worsened. He eventually began
having seizures every three to five minutes. By the time
staff called nine one one, almost four hours after Chernyak
began vomiting in his bunk, it was too late. Doctor
suspected he was braindead by the time he got to

(09:58):
a local emergency room. Tests showed he'd suffered a massive stroke.
In less than two days. Doctors took Chernyak off life support.
He was forty four. Tarasyuk has filed a wrongful death
claim against the Department of Homeland Security, which the agency
has not responded to. DHS also did not respond to
questions for this article. We'll be right back with Lucrative

(10:22):
ice detention centers bring money and anger to an Alaska
Native community. Welcome back to Lucrative ice detention centers bring
money and anger to an Alaska Native community. You can't
travel far in Katsubu without seeing the NANA logo. There
are two Alaska Air flights a day into town, landing

(10:45):
near nana's headquarters, and a National Park Service Center where
a taxidermied Muskox greets visitors on bulletin boards and walls.
And Katsubu's grocery stores are job postings and information on
corporate philanthropy, such as fuel subsidies for shareholders. Some homes
are lifted onto pilings an effort to protect them from
erosion and rising tides during increasingly frequent seasonal floods. Shipping

(11:10):
containers sit in many yards. Once something lands in Kotsubu,
it's too expensive to ship it back out, and people
try to find a use for it. Many people here
work for NANA, or used to, or want to. These
are the local Alaska jobs, such as operating heavy machinery
at the company's zinc and lead mine, not the Akima
gigs on the other side of the continent. About two

(11:33):
years into Trump's first administration, shareholders brought concerns about conditions
at the detention centers to the board. The board ordered
management to perform an internal review of the ice contracts,
which took months. According to a former executive who was
involved in the process but asked not to be identified
as the person still works in the industry, the company
opted to keep the contracts, concluding that conditions were improving.

(11:57):
Akama employees weren't involved in any of the alleged abuses
of concern to shareholders, and the contracts didn't violate their
mission of respecting in UPAT values. The former executive says,
the internal review wasn't widely publicized. Shareholders have become accustomed
to the reluctance of NANA leaders to discuss the company's
role in immigrant detention. Unlike GOEO and Core Civic, which

(12:21):
boast in their quarterly reports about their growing ice revenue,
NANA rarely acknowledges it. The company makes no mention of
it in its annual reports to shareholders and Alaska regulators.
The current president and CEO, John Agnagluke Lincoln, told BusinessWeek
he couldn't discuss the contracts with Ice because of national
security concerns. Nonetheless, more shareholders have come to realize how

(12:43):
their dividend money is generated. Media reports, advocacy groups, and
US lawmakers have cited over crowding and poor conditions at
akemrun detention centers. A small group of NANA shareholders have
taken it upon themselves to share clips and articles on Facebook.
I never heard anything like that until this year, says
Suzanne Evans, a shareholder in Katsubu. She first learned about

(13:07):
Akima's ice work from a cousin's Facebook post this spring.
That is sick. Setting up those detention centers is cruel.
Native corporations were founded after Alaska Native leaders pushed for
an alternative to the reservation system of the Lower forty eight.
They're more than businesses. They've come to really represent the
Alaska Native community and these cultural groups, says Kimberly McGinnis,

(13:31):
a University of Alaska Fairbanks assistant professor who wrote her
dissertation on Alaska Native corporation governance. Whether you're a shareholder
or not, the actions of that Alaska Native Corporation really
reflect your identity. When they were first established, NANA and
the other regional corporations looked closer to home for business opportunities.
Much of it focused on supporting construction on the trans

(13:53):
Alaska pipeline system and oil field work more generally. By
the mid nineteen eighties, many Alaska Native corporations were struggling.
Congress offered a solution, extending a special program for small
businesses to tribal nations and Alaska Native corporations. That program,
known as eight A, was meant to help socially and

(14:14):
economically disadvantaged people and groups compete for government contracts. Government
agencies could limit certain contracts to just these bidders, and
often they didn't have to compete against anyone at all.
NANA has been doing work for the federal government going
back to at least nineteen ninety five, when it got
a contract to provide services at West Point Military Academy. Today,

(14:36):
AKIMA operates a slew of its own subsidiaries that can
bid for eight A contracts. Crucial to all that is
akima's CEO and President Bill Monet, a Virginia executive whose
worked in government contracting for decades. NANA put all of
its federal contracting business under the Akima umbrella in twenty
twelve and placed Monet in charge. The Obama administration had

(14:59):
been deporting a record number of immigrants. In November twenty thirteen,
Akima hired a former assistant field office director for ICE.
A contract to run Chrome held by a partnership that
included another Alaska Native corporation was nearing its end, and
ICE invited any company that qualified for the A Day
program to bid. Akima did just that. In April twenty fourteen,

(15:21):
It won the contract, its first ICE detention deal, carrying
a value of more than a half billion dollars over
the next eleven years. That same year, the company took
over the contract to run the facility near Buffalo. More recently,
under the Biden administration, Akima became the main contractor for
the Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Texas. It notched

(15:42):
another win when it was selected to provide security services
at the portion of Guantanamo Bay used to detain immigrants. Monet,
who also serves as nana's Chief operating officer, has been
paid handsomely for Akima's success, earning almost forty million dollars
in gross pay over the past six In twenty twenty four,
he received seven point nine million dollars, according to a

(16:05):
proxy statement filed by the company, that was roughly two
million dollars more than the total compensation of the then
CEO of GOEO, the biggest private prison operator in the country.
In addition to his roles within NANA, Monet operates an
independent company that has leased an airplane to Akima, which
paid his company more than one point seven million dollars

(16:25):
over five years. These related party transactions were disclosed by
the company in corporate filings. NANA did not make Monet
available for an interview. NANA subsidiaries have secured contracts worth
nearly one point two billion dollars to work with ICE
over the past decade, according to government contracting data compiled
by Bloomberg Government. More than eighty percent of that was

(16:48):
through contracts available only to eight A companies. Akima is
ICE's largest recipient of eight A contracts, accounting for almost
sixty percent of the agency set asides for that program
over the past ten years. By the time, personnel at
the Buffalo Batavia Service Processing Center in New York arranged
for Cheedy Nwagbo to see the surgeon for his frostbite.

(17:09):
It was too late. Nwagbo, a fifty seven year old Nigerian,
had lost feeling in his fingers during a midwinter crossing
on foot from New York into Canada. He'd come to
the U. S In nineteen eighty eight for college and
overstayed his student visa. He built a life in Ohio,
raising five American born children, but as twenty twenty five arrived,

(17:30):
he feared being caught in an immigration sweep. He hoped Canada,
where his brother lived, would grant him a visa, allowing
him to stay relatively close to his kids. He paid
a human smuggler two thousand dollars to get him to
the border, but the man dropped him off some distance
away he doesn't know how far, and told him to walk.
It was the first of February. Nwogbo got bogged down

(17:53):
in the snow. He lost his left glove. When he
was certain he'd entered Canada, he called nine one one.
The Canadian border officials who found him didn't welcome him
as he'd hoped. Instead, they turned him over to their
US counterparts, saying they couldn't reach his brother to confirm
his story. Doctors told Niwogbo his fingers could be saved,

(18:13):
he just needed to see a frostbite specialist. US Customs
and Border Protection didn't arrange that, however, before delivering Nuwogbo
to ICE's Batavia facility on February eleventh. For weeks, he says,
he pleaded with the guards and medical personnel at Batavia
to arrange for him to get care from a specialist.
They finally did in late March, but by then some

(18:34):
of the fingers had turned black or blue and blisters
had formed. The damage was done. A surgeon amputated three
fingers and parts of three others. The doctor didn't even
try to save them, Nuwogbo says. He said the window
had closed. In July, Nuwogbo filed a claim against ICE,
alleging that negligent medical care cost him his fingers. Emails

(18:57):
show that ICE transferred the claim to CBS, which is
reviewing it. Ice referred questions about the claim to CBP,
which did not reply to a request for comment for
this article. There have been allegations of abuses at Batavia
for years. Federal government inspection reports document that ACIMA guards
unnecessarily used pepper spray and force to remove people from

(19:19):
their cells repeatedly over the past two years. ICE responded
to one of the reports by updating its use of
force policy and implementing annual de escalation training. A February
twenty twenty five analysis by the nonprofit news outlet Investigative
Post found that people placed in solitary confinement at the
facility were held there on average for twenty five days,

(19:42):
ten days longer than is considered torture in the state
of New York. Batavia, a federal facility is not subject
to that state restriction. In twenty twenty, Akima was sued
over a work program in which immigrants participate in jobs
like cooking and cleaning around Batavia in exchange for one
dollar day in commissary credit. The program calls for the

(20:03):
work to be voluntary. The lawsuit accused Oakima of forcing
people to do these tasks in some cases. Akima has
denied the allegations, and the case hasn't yet gone to trial.
It's my knowledge and belief whatever that AGS has never
forced or coerced any detainee to work a detail that
they did not want to do. Laura Mitchell, president of

(20:24):
Akima Global Services, the unit that operates Batavia, said in
a deposition they have to pick up after themselves. She added,
it's not a hotel. When he arrived at Batavia, niwok
Bo says he saw more people than beds. Those with
no bed, including him, were given a thin foam mat
to sleep on the floor. Overcrowding was a daily issue.

(20:45):
Nwok Bo says they were just overwhelmed. He was held
at the facility until summer, when he was transferred to
another ice facility in Louisiana. In July, he was put
on a plane in shackles for a multi stop, thirty
hour fly to Lagos. The Trump administration has set plans
to expand detention capacity to one hundred thousand beds or more.

(21:08):
In May, I shortlisted more than forty companies that would
be eligible to bid on the expansion projects. Akima made
the cut. Those new facilities won't always look like traditional
detention centers. In its quest for speed, the administration has
championed temporary camps using tents on military bases across the country.

(21:28):
In August, I started detaining people on the Fort Bliss
Army base in Texas. Akima has been tapped to provide
security services there, according to people familiar with the contract,
as well as recent job postings on Akima's website. NANA
has twenty three board directors. All but two must have
a residence in an Alaska Native village in Nana Territory.

(21:50):
Directors are elected by shareholders in a proxy vote and
serve three year terms. In theory, these are the people
who could direct change at NANA, but so far, our
concerns over ice contracts haven't prompted the board to do so.
When one shareholder based in the lower forty eight sent
an email in March to the company expressing her disapproval

(22:10):
of the contracts, she didn't get an answer for a
few months. Eventually, the board's chair Lee replied in a
one page letter. It said board members had done site
visits and found no issues. We remain confident that our
operations are in full compliance with our moral commitment to
human dignity and reflect who we are as in Upiac.

(22:30):
Media reports of abuses Lee wrote were incorrect. In late July,
shareholders had an opportunity to speak directly to board members
and NANA leadership at a community meeting in the village
of Deering. The meeting was intended to cover general business matters,
but some shareholders had something specific on their minds. Several
pressed the board on why Akima continued to work for ICE.

(22:53):
I cared deeply about what happens to our community, to
our people, and how NANA leads right now. I have
a lot of concerns about the subsidiary Akima, said rue
calak Ramos, a shareholder who dialed into the conference call
from Washington State. I am asking and hoping for leadership
from Nana to really assess whether those relationships are worth

(23:13):
the financial windfall that's clearly coming our way. With Desiree Hagen,
Fola Akinibe, and Sophie Alexander, this story was reported in
collaboration with kot Z and Alaska Public Media. Coot Z,
a partner station of Alaska Public Media, has received donations
from local businesses, including Nana, in the past.