A Quick Overview of News Profiles and Government Documents Related to Tribal Contracting for ICE Detention Facilities and Related Activities

Prairie Band: “Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation has landed a $30 million contract to vet and design mega detention centers in the Trump administration’s push to stop illegal immigration.” [2025]

NANA Regional Corp.: “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, DC. NANA’s largest contracts, worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, are with the 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 abandoning crucial values by taking an increasingly large role in President Donald Trump’s mass deportation drive.” [2025]

Other ANCs: “Alaska Native corporations and their subsidiaries do much of the work — and reap the profits — of detaining and guarding U.S. immigrants, patrolling the nation’s borders and maintaining detention centers.” [2021]

Other ANCs: “Well, I combed through the government contracts database to find out what kind of work they did. So I looked at recent contracts for ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement). I found a NANA subsidiary that got a $22 million contract for detention management at Krome, an ICE detention  facility near Miami. The same subsidiary got a contract of $8 million for detention support services in upstate New York. There was an AHTNA subsidiary that got a recent ICE contract for $35 million to provide guard services at a facility in Texas. And another Alaska Native corporation subsidiary runs an ICE detention center in San Pedro, California. Also, I saw one for armed ground transport — $700,000, one of the smaller ones — and it went to a Bering Straits Native corporation subsidiary.” [2018]

Bering Straits Native Corp. “Located just below the Arctic Circle, tribal communities in the Bering Straits region are well-acquainted with frozen conditions. Yet among the 8,000 Indigenous Alaskan shareholders who own the Bering Straits Native Corporation, some are unaware that their company staffs an ICE immigrant detention facility in El Paso, Texas.” [2021]

Same: “Native corporations and other Alaska-based companies have taken on at least a billion dollars in contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in recent years, according to a review of available government contract data from 2012 through the present.” [2018]

Doyton Ltd and others: “Under current federal law and Department of Homeland Security regulations, Native American companies are favored recipients for immigrant detention contracts, and they reap large profits by assigning those contracts to non-Native American firms. One of the major Native-owned corporations that has received such contracts is Doyton Ltd., which holds the contract for operational, transportation and food services at the 800-bed El Paso Service Processing Center in El Paso, Texas.”

Same: “Doyon is one of several Native American corporations that are sealing major contracts with the Department of Homeland Security. Most are Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs), a collection of regional and village corporations created as part of the Alaska Claims Settlement Act of 1971. A few of these Native American corporations are contracting for various parts of ICE’s immigrant detention operations.” [2010]

Department of Homeland Security “Tribal Resources Guide

dhs-tribal-resource-guide

NANA [2025]

GAO Report : “Increased Use of Alaska Native Corporations’ Special 8(a) Provisions Calls for Tailored Oversight” [2006]

gao-06-399

More NANA/Akima: “As the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has ramped up, officials are sending some migrants to a detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that’s run by the subsidiary of an Alaska Native corporation.” More on same issue.

Yet more NANA/Akima: “A corporate conglomerate now running the US government’s immigration detention center at the Guantánamo Bay naval base on a lucrative contract has been the subject of critical audits and a civil rights complaint over conditions at three other migrant lockups it has run within the US, documents reviewed by the Guardian show.”