A Native American Tribe Has a $800 Million Contract to Run ICE Detention Centers

A Daily Beast Exclusive

The National Congress of American Indians has called Trump’s immigration policies ‘simply immoral.’ One member group, though, is taking a very different approach.

By Justin Rohrlich and Adam Rawnsley

The Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, is currently holding many of the parents who have been separated from their kids. But while PIDC is owned by ICE, its guards are provided by a subsidiary of Ahtna, Inc., a portfolio of businesses operated by the Ahtna, a federally recognized Alaska Native people.

Ahtna, Inc. is one of a number of companies profiting off of the deportation of undocumented immigrants from the United States. Previous reporting by The Daily Beast has revealed that the federal government currently employs the services of several companies and charities bringing in millions of dollars off of the Trump administration’s treatment of immigrant families.

The Ahtna, who have also run immigrant detention centers in New York, Florida, and Arizona in addition to Port Isabel, fall under the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) umbrella, and Ahtna, Inc. is an Alaska Native Regional Corporation established by Congress under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.

A recent statement from the NCAI decried the Trump administration’s “forced separation of immigrant children from their families,” calling it “simply immoral” and a reminder of “a dark period for many Native American families.”

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