Southeast Alaska’s largest tribe has earned nearly $40 million from U.S. Navy contracts in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba – money some tribal members are concerned comes from supporting immigrant detention.
While tribal corporation leadership says their operations are separate from the detention center on the military base, what’s happening on the ground may tell a different story.
Guantánamo Bay is the site of an active U.S. Navy base with about 6,000 military personnel living and working there. It also houses a detention facility. That facility’s main purpose was to detain people accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
The Trump administration has been using the detention facility todetain migrantsas part of its aggressive deportation policies that many deem inhumane and unconstitutional.
Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation is the business arm of the Southeast Alaska tribal government — the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. The corporation currently has a contract in Guantánamo Bay.
In 2018, the corporation’s subsidiary, KIRA,announceda contract with the U.S. Navy to provide maintenance services, port operations and waterfront administration for the base. That contract lasted until 2022. According to a government website that tracks contracts, a similar contract started two months before it ended and isset to last until February 2028. The value of the two contracts together has so far reached just under $40 million.
Tlingit and Haida said the corporation’s contract provides services to the Navy base; it does not support detention operations at the base. But some tribal members, like Clarice Johnson, have doubts about that.
Tribal involvement in Trump’s detention operations
Johnson said she’s been concerned about the contract since it began seven years ago. But when the Trump administrationvowedto hold thousands of immigrants in Guantánamo, it brought new urgency to her concerns.
“It makes me ill to think of Tlingit and Haida making money off the abuse of other people,” Johnson said. “Especially those who are just looking for a better life.”
Guantánamo Bay’s detention center has been known for human rights violations for decades. It’s also notoriously secretive.
In 2023, aUnited Nations investigatorresearched the facility and reported “ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.” The report suggested that the facility be closed. But two years later, the second Trump administration pledged to use it for migrant detention.
In other parts of the state, Alaska Nativetribal membershaveprotestedtheir corporations’ investments in immigration detention centers. NANA Regional Corporation’s subsidiary, Akima, has been directlyinvesting in ICE detention operations, including inGuantánamo Bay, for years.
In the rest of the United States, Indigenous people arequestioningtheir own tribal governments’ involvement in detention centers.
When stories about inhumane conditions at Akima-run detention centers surfaced this fall, Johnson said she started posting in a Facebook group called “Shareholders of Sealaska,” to make sure tribal members like her knew Tlingit and Haida also had connections to Guantánamo Bay.
“I didn’t want people to forget that whenever they’re criticizing other corporations for doing this, that our own tribe was also participating,” she said.
Her posts garnered discussion with other tribal members, who posted their own concerns. In response to public criticism, Tlingit and Haida posted astatementin early December saying the contract is “strictly limited to the operation and maintenance of multiple watercraft and port facilities,” and that the corporation is obligated to continue the work until the contract ends.
What Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation is doing in Guantánamo Bay
But Johnson is worried that some of those watercraft transport migrants to the detention center in Guantánamo Bay.
Richard Rinehart is the CEO of Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation. He said it’s against taking on contracts that assist in immigration detention.
“We don’t have anything to do with that,” Rinehart said.
Instead, the corporation contract relates to vessel operation and maintenance, he said.
“We run a ferry that goes from the leeward side, which is where the airport is, to the windward side, which is where the naval base is,” he said. “Goes back and forth.”
However, Rinehart said he’s heard that the ferry the corporation operates is used to transport detainees. But, he said, he and his staff aren’t involved with that process.
“There are times — I hear, I’ve not seen this — but my manager there tells me that they do come across and they’ll put somebody on the ferry. It’s usually late at night, and it’s all just their vehicles, all their staff,” he said. “They move across and they go to the airport, but we have the only ferry going from the airport to the windward side, where everything is.”
At least 700 migrants were detained at Guantánamo Bay in the past year, andwere initially flown there, according toprevious reportingby NPR and the New York Times.
In an email to KTOO in response to follow-up questions, Rinehart said he could not speak to how many migrants have been transported via the ferry the tribal corporation maintains and operates.
KTOO could not confirm whether or not there is another way migrant detainees are transported from the airport to the facilities they are held in.
From the corporation’s perspective, he said involvement in migrant transport is “outside our visibility and control and is not tracked, directed, or managed by [Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation] as part of our contractual duties.”
Though Guantánamo Bay is often linked with the detention facility, Rinehart says he doesn’t think a lot of people realize it’s primarily a naval base with about 6,000 military personnel. And that’s who Rinehart said the contract serves.
Johnson said even incidental involvement in migrant detention is still too close for her comfort.
“I understand why they want to claim six degrees of separation from ICE,” she said. “But I think that their actions at Guantánamo Bay place them in much closer proximity than many tribal citizens realize.”
And she wants to know if the tribal corporation will take a stance on migrant detention as more opportunities to profit from it arise.
“Will Tlingit and Haida jump on the money train?” Johnson said. “Or will they actually have guidelines on which contracts they will bid on, as some corporations have?”
Rinehart said most Tlingit Haida Tribal Business contracts are with the US military. And those contracts, he said, support the corporation’s mission: create more funding for the tribe.