Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Kotsubue is a community of about three thousand people in
Speaker 2: northwest Alaska. It sits roughly thirty miles north of the
Speaker 2: Arctic Circle.
Speaker 1: It's pretty remote. There's no roads that connect to the
Speaker 1: community or any of the communities in the region. We
Speaker 1: primarily travel by plane, boat, or in the wintertime, we
Speaker 1: use snowmobiles to kind of travel along the ice.
Speaker 2: Desiree Hagen lives there. She's the news director of the
Speaker 2: local public radio station KOTZ In Kotsubu.
Speaker 1: I'm the only news person. I'm the only reporter, and
Speaker 1: it's a region the size of Indiana.
Speaker 2: Most of Kottsubu's residents are in newpiac, a group indigenous
Speaker 2: to northwestern Alaska. Their families have been there for generations.
Speaker 2: It's a community big on nature.
Speaker 1: We have a major dog race. It's like the last
Speaker 1: dog race of the season, dog machine race. It's in April.
Speaker 1: I've always wanted to do it. I've always thought like,
Speaker 1: maybe one day I.
Speaker 3: Could do this race.
Speaker 2: Many residents are also shareholders or employees of NANA. It's
Speaker 2: a for profit corporation established by Congress in the nineteen
Speaker 2: seventies as a settlement over land claims by indigenous tribes
Speaker 2: and to prop up Alaska's native economies. Twice a year,
Speaker 2: Nana shareholders get a dividend payout of the company's profits.
Speaker 1: Everybody looks forward to Nana dividends to dividend time.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty five, the average payout for the year
Speaker 2: per shareholder will be about three three hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: They'll hold off doing things until they get their dividend,
Speaker 1: Like once I get my dividend, I'm going to get
Speaker 1: a new four wheeler, or you know, hey, can I
Speaker 1: borrow some money. I'll pay you back when dividends get here.
Speaker 2: Historically that money came from Nana work in local industries
Speaker 2: like oil and mining. In fact, Nana leases the mining
Speaker 2: rights to one of the largest lead and zinc mines
Speaker 2: in the world. But in recent years, the overwhelming majority
Speaker 2: of Nana's revenue, the money that's fueling those dividend payments,
Speaker 2: it's come from a subsidiary of the company, and a
Speaker 2: chunk of that money comes from a corner of Nana's
Speaker 2: business that some shareholders say they weren't aware of, ice
Speaker 2: detention facilities.
Speaker 4: There were folks who were surprised to learn that the
Speaker 4: company was involved in this work.
Speaker 2: Potly Mason's is an investigative reporter at Bloomberg. She visited
Speaker 2: Kotzebu to report with Desiree on Nana's growing relationship with ICE,
Speaker 2: and Poty says that as news of those government contracts
Speaker 2: has come to light, it's caused deep concern among some
Speaker 2: in the community.
Speaker 4: The shareholders who I spoke with, they all sort of
Speaker 4: had the same refrain that they were, you know, they
Speaker 4: totally understood that these might be profitable contracts, but they
Speaker 4: were concerned that, however profitable they might be, that they
Speaker 4: did not uphold the values of their community, and that
Speaker 4: they were zerned about human rights conditions and how people
Speaker 4: might be treated in these facilities.
Speaker 2: I'm David Gera, and this is the Big Take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today. On the show, a collaboration between Bloomberg News,
Speaker 2: Kotz and Alaska Public Media, How an Alaska Native Corporation
Speaker 2: became an ICE detention giant, and why some of its
Speaker 2: shareholders are now speaking out. Alaska Native Corporations were established
Speaker 2: through the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: In exchange for dropping their claims to vast areas of
Speaker 2: the state, Alaska natives received roughly forty five million acres
Speaker 2: of land and nearly one billion dollars in a settlement payment.
Speaker 2: The act helped clear the way for the trans Alaska
Speaker 2: Pipeline system and came after a push from Alaska Native
Speaker 2: leaders to create an alternative to the reservation system of
Speaker 2: the lower forty eight states. So divided Alaska into twelve
Speaker 2: regions and established a private, for profit regional corporation for
Speaker 2: each of them. NANA is one of those corporations. The
Speaker 2: regional corporations got mineral and oil rights for those lands,
Speaker 2: and nana's over fifteen thousand shareholders are eligible for a
Speaker 2: cut of those profits. Here's Kotz's Desiree Hagen.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that this was created was some
Speaker 1: of the people that were sort of the architects of
Speaker 1: this system. They wanted people to be independent so that
Speaker 1: they could do activities like subsistence hunting and fishing and
Speaker 1: would have a sort of passive income.
Speaker 2: Desiree and Bloomberg's Polymoscins have been reporting on NANA, the
Speaker 2: Alaska Native corporation that got spun up in Consubu and
Speaker 2: its surrounding area after President Nixon signed that legislation into law.
Speaker 2: Polly says, at first, NANA invested in industries that were
Speaker 2: close to home in.
Speaker 4: Their business, sort of in the seventies and early eighties,
Speaker 4: a lot of what they're focused on is natural resources.
Speaker 4: They're focused on oil, on mining, on supporting the Trans
Speaker 4: Alaska pipeline system, and they start to struggle a little bit.
Speaker 4: They're having a little bit of trouble, and Congress sees
Speaker 4: a way out, they see a solution, and they decide
Speaker 4: to extend what's called the eight A Program.
Speaker 2: The eight A Program is essentially a carve out. It's
Speaker 2: meant to help socially and economically disadvantaged groups compete for
Speaker 2: government contracts, and it requires the federal government to reserve
Speaker 2: a certain percentage of contracts to bidders from those backgrounds.
Speaker 4: That basically means that instead of competing in this huge, huge,
Speaker 4: huwed wide world of government contracting, you're competing in a
Speaker 4: different program that's a little bit smaller and geared towards
Speaker 4: these smaller, perhaps disadvantage groups.
Speaker 2: NANA has been doing work for the federal government as
Speaker 2: far back as nineteen ninety five when it got a
Speaker 2: contract to provide services to the US Military Academy at
Speaker 2: West Point.
Speaker 4: They're doing variety of work in all corners of the
Speaker 4: federal government. There is technical work, there's tech support, there's
Speaker 4: DoD contracting. You know, it's not like they are just
Speaker 4: in one teeny tiny sliver of the federal government. There
Speaker 4: are no shortage of contracts that they are going to
Speaker 4: take on.
Speaker 2: And in twenty twelve, Nana organized all of its federal
Speaker 2: contracting under one subsidiary called Akama. The next year, Akama
Speaker 2: hired a former assistant ICE Field Office director. His LinkedIn
Speaker 2: page lists his role at the company that year as
Speaker 2: director of Operations. By twenty fourteen, Okama won its first
Speaker 2: contract to run an ice detention facility, the Chrome North
Speaker 2: Service Processing Center in Miami.
Speaker 4: You might have heard of Chrome more recently this year
Speaker 4: because it was one of the centers that was over
Speaker 4: capacity in the early Trump administration earlier this year. That
Speaker 4: is their first foray into ice work. From there, they
Speaker 4: take on the Batavia Detention Center, which is in New
Speaker 4: York State, And now they've got about a half dozen
Speaker 4: places that they're operating.
Speaker 2: Among those half dozen other places is Guantanamo Bay. Through
Speaker 2: its subsidiary NANA, runs the Trump administration's migrant detention facility there.
Speaker 4: That's a really big one. I think that that is
Speaker 4: a facility that has not actually held a ton of people,
Speaker 4: but gotten a lot of attention because of its location.
Speaker 2: What do we know broadly speaking about the conditions inside
Speaker 2: these ICE facilities that are run by Akama.
Speaker 4: So I'll start off by speaking about Chrome. Chrome during
Speaker 4: the second Trump administration in its early days, you know,
Speaker 4: it was being cited for just overflow issues. And you
Speaker 4: know the other thing that we start hearing about Chrome
Speaker 4: that people feel unsafe there, they feel overcrowded.
Speaker 2: Since the start of the year, four men in ICE
Speaker 2: custody have died after being detained at Chrome. At another
Speaker 2: Akama managed detention center near Buffalo, New York, government inspectors
Speaker 2: repeatedly found that guards used inappropriate force. In a lawsuit,
Speaker 2: those detained there have alleged they were subject to forced labor.
Speaker 2: Acama has denied the forced labor allegations, and the case
Speaker 2: hasn't yet gone to trial. Ice did not respond to
Speaker 2: requests for comment, and US Customs and Border Protection and
Speaker 2: the Department of Homeland Security have not responded to claims
Speaker 2: by detained immigrants Bloomberg spoke with. Nana also did not
Speaker 2: reply to a detailed list of questions from Bloomberg.
Speaker 4: However, in April, after a Facebook poll was conducted by
Speaker 4: some shareholders who were concerned about this line of work,
Speaker 4: the company did note that they felt like this work
Speaker 4: did uphold their values of their community, and the company
Speaker 4: noted that they were not able to disclose some of
Speaker 4: the nature of the contract and speak publicly extensively at
Speaker 4: the time.
Speaker 2: But through the years, Nana's contract work through Akama and
Speaker 2: the eight AA program has only grown. Polly says, it's
Speaker 2: a noteworthy example of a diversity and inclusion initiative that
Speaker 2: survived under an administration trying to get rid of them.
Speaker 2: NANA subsidiaries have secured contracts worth nearly one point two
Speaker 2: billion dollars to work with ICE over the past decade.
Speaker 2: That's according to government contracting data compiled by Bloomberg Government.
Speaker 2: So what does all this mean for NANA shareholders in Kotzebue.
Speaker 2: Polly spoke with Roswell Schaeffer Senior, a man who's had
Speaker 2: many lives in the city growing up.
Speaker 5: Everybody had to help in the household to survive. So
Speaker 5: we picked berries. We picked greens where we hunt constantly, and.
Speaker 4: I picked salmon berry's yesterday.
Speaker 3: Oh you did that all cool.
Speaker 2: He's been a commercial fisherman, a subsistence hunter, and an artist.
Speaker 2: He's been a mayor, a councilman, and a judge. And
Speaker 2: from nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety two he was also
Speaker 2: the president and chief executive officer of Nana. He told Polly,
Speaker 2: the Nana of today is a far cry from the
Speaker 2: corporation he oversaw.
Speaker 4: So what kind of business was Nana doing at the
Speaker 4: time that you were president.
Speaker 5: Well, there they had a construction company, we had a
Speaker 5: fishing business, oil oil services, electrical services up on the
Speaker 5: Norse Smoke. We had all kinds of jobs light that.
Speaker 2: Now with the ice contracts, Shaffer says, the corporation has
Speaker 2: lost its way.
Speaker 5: That's that the contract really goes contrary to our values. Absolutely,
Speaker 5: the attention facilities like that are against our principles.
Speaker 2: A lot of Nana's ice business is run thousands of
Speaker 2: miles away from Kotzebue. So who's in charge and how
Speaker 2: are shareholders making their concerns known? That's after the break
Speaker 2: over the last decade. NANA, the Alaska Native corporation based
Speaker 2: in the city of Kotzebue, has one contracts worth more
Speaker 2: than one billion dollars to run and support ice detention facilities,
Speaker 2: and residents of the community who get a dividend of
Speaker 2: the corporation's profits, are starting to raise concerns that this
Speaker 2: business doesn't align with the community's values, but Bloomberg's Polymosin
Speaker 2: says that a lot of that business happens far away.
Speaker 2: Kotspew doesn't have ice attention facilities in town, and the
Speaker 2: subsidiary that handles nana's federal contracting, ACAMA, is headquartered thousands
Speaker 2: of miles away from the Arctic Circle.
Speaker 4: So they are run really kind of like a traditional
Speaker 4: classic government contractor. It's exactly where you expect them to
Speaker 4: be an office park in Virginia. You know, the folks
Speaker 4: who are running it have a lot of career experience
Speaker 4: in the federal government, and some folks who they're hiring
Speaker 4: that's really what they've always done, just in this case
Speaker 4: they're doing it for an Alaska Native corporation.
Speaker 2: Crucial to all that business is Akima's CEO and president,
Speaker 2: Bill Monet. He's a Virginia executive who's worked in government
Speaker 2: contracting for decades.
Speaker 4: Money is certainly well compensated. If we look at his
Speaker 4: compensation over the last six years, it's almost forty million dollars.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty four, Money received seven point nine million
Speaker 2: dollars according to a proxy statement filed by the company.
Speaker 2: That's roughly two million dollars more than the total compensation
Speaker 2: that year of the former CEO of Geogroup, the biggest
Speaker 2: private prison operator in the country.
Speaker 4: I do think that that is notable. You know, that's
Speaker 4: certainly not all of Bill Monet's job. They do a
Speaker 4: whole lot of other contracting. Dood work is a huge
Speaker 4: part of their business, like it is with most federal contracting.
Speaker 4: But I do you think it's important to know what
Speaker 4: his compensation looks like.
Speaker 2: Over that time, you mentioned that word began to spread
Speaker 2: about these ice contracts that NANA had. How would you
Speaker 2: describe that reaction among people in the community as they
Speaker 2: learned about that, The reaction among shareholders to that news.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people were shocked. They had
Speaker 1: not heard of it.
Speaker 2: Kotz's desire Hagen says that as news of Nana's ice
Speaker 2: contracts traveled through the community. Some shareholders found it troubling.
Speaker 1: One thing that comes up a lot is that it
Speaker 1: goes against their value system. So there are different values.
Speaker 1: It's in youpac illucusate, which is like, actually, I have
Speaker 1: them right here a list. I think it's about let's say, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Speaker 1: I think it's about seventeen is when I'm counting, you know,
Speaker 1: and their like respect for elders, respect for tribe, respect
Speaker 1: for nature, you know, cooperation, hard work, humility, humor. You know,
Speaker 1: they go on. But one of the things that I
Speaker 1: heard a few people say is like, why are we
Speaker 1: doing this to other brown people? You know, why are we,
Speaker 1: as Indupac people doing this to another marginalized group.
Speaker 2: Polly says some shareholders are starting to speak out. There
Speaker 2: was that Facebook poll in March. The true response is
Speaker 2: from one hundred shareholders, and a majority of respondents said
Speaker 2: they disapproved of the work. A NANA shareholder emailed the
Speaker 2: corporation's board expressing her disapproval of Nana's contracts with ICE.
Speaker 4: A few months after she sent that letter, the shareholder
Speaker 4: received a response from the board chair and the board
Speaker 4: chair in a one page letter basically said we are
Speaker 4: comfortable with these contracts. The board has conducted site visits
Speaker 4: and that's that.
Speaker 2: And in late July, the issue resurfaced at a community
Speaker 2: meeting for NANA shareholders in the village of Deering.
Speaker 3: My English name is ru Ramos. I'm calling from the
Speaker 3: Lower forty eight, but I care deeply about what happened
Speaker 3: to our community, to our people, and how NANA leads.
Speaker 2: The meeting was intended to cover general business matters, but
Speaker 2: several shareholders pressed Nana's board on why Akama continues to
Speaker 2: work with ICE.
Speaker 3: So I'm asking and hoping for leadership from Nana to
Speaker 3: really assess whether those relationships are worth the financial woodfall
Speaker 3: that's clearly coming our way. So I really encourage us
Speaker 3: all to really think about being displaced from our lands.
Speaker 3: As a Lower forty eight Innuit, I feel really strongly
Speaker 3: that being displaced is the place in which our hearts
Speaker 3: and our spirits go to die. So I really hope
Speaker 3: that you all see the pain that where people are
Speaker 3: causing problems. So I'm asking for sharing. You often known
Speaker 3: we have RESK for connection.
Speaker 2: Nana's president said he thought their comments were heartfelt, but
Speaker 2: noted that connectivity issues made it difficult for some people
Speaker 2: on the call to hear them. Meanwhile, Akama's business with
Speaker 2: ice is continuing to grow. The value of Nana's ice
Speaker 2: contracts this year is approaching three hundred million dollars, a
Speaker 2: figure that Polly says is rising sharply.
Speaker 4: That is an increase of one hundred million dollars since
Speaker 4: last year. And while those are both plenty large numbers,
Speaker 4: we also need to be looking ahead at the forty
Speaker 4: five billion with a B dollars that are going to
Speaker 4: be dedicated to this line of work in the future. Now,
Speaker 4: I do think that as more people find out, perhaps
Speaker 4: that those careers are going to be more frequent, perhaps
Speaker 4: there'll be more shareholders asking these questions. But among the
Speaker 4: shareholders who have posed the question so far, they have
Speaker 4: not found a super robust plan from the board being presented.
Speaker 4: They haven't released any information about moving away from these
Speaker 4: contracts or anything like that, just that their impressions thus
Speaker 4: far is that they will be continue with this line
Speaker 4: of work and they do believe that their values are
Speaker 4: being upheld in how they handle this line of work.
Speaker 2: This is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David
Speaker 2: Gurra to get more from The Big Take and unlimited
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