The Tribal Organizations That Won’t Quit ICE

In December 2025, the Prairie Band of Potawatomi withdrew from a $30 million Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract and fired the executives who brokered it, after criticism from tribal members. In January, the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin terminated over $6 million in ICE contracts and replaced its business group head. You’re probably noticing a pattern: In both of these cases, public pressure from tribal organizations forced the divestiture in President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation machine. But the trend hasn’t held everywhere. One notable instance is in Alaska, where Native corporations—a birthright to their shareholders—have continued pursuing ICE contracts despite the fact that the same kinds of forces are demanding that the Bering Straits Native Corporation, or BSNC, divest itself from contracts involving the controversial immigration agency.

It’s a surprising result given the obvious fault lines. “Native people know oppression,” wrote Levi Rickert, a Prairie Band of Potawatomi tribal citizen. “We were forcibly removed from our homelands, locked in Indian boarding schools, confined to reservations. We cannot—we should not—profit from the oppression of others.”

Why could tribal members force action at Prairie Band of Potawatomi and Oneida, while BSNC shareholders cannot?

The key difference lies in the legal structure of the targeted firms. Prairie Band of Potawatomi and Oneida are tribal governments, and their leaders answer to enrolled members, who can vote them out or demand accountability at council meetings. But Alaska Native Corporations, such as BSNC, are not tribal governments. They are for-profit corporations created by the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and their boards answer to fiduciary duty, not community values. Shareholders can sign petitions, but the board has no obligation to respond.

That structure is on full display at BSNC. Its subsidiary, Paragon Professional Services, holds $88 million in federal contracts with ICE, including for work at the East Montana Detention Center in El Paso and transportation of detained immigrants across Newark, New York, Baltimore, and Boston. More than 470 BSNC shareholders have signed a petition demanding the corporation divest from ICE work. The board has not formally responded.

“With tribal governments in the Lower 48, there’s a lot of attention to what economic development projects the Tribes are engaged in,” said Ann Tweedy, federal Indian law professor at the University of Mississippi. “There’s less division between the tribal government and any economic development that’s going on. That creates a direct accountability.… I think with Alaska, it created a system where the corporate governance is a bit more removed from shareholders than the direct line you see in tribal governments.

“The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act had this assimilationist goal of turning Tribes more into corporate bodies,” said Tweedy. “The idea that they shouldn’t be acting like Tribes is kind of inherent in ANCSA.”

That philosophy has proven to be the dividing line for those who are hoping that BSNC will succumb to public pressure. In the case of most public corporations, the main obligation is to generate value for shareholders. But tribal corporations are typically built different: They carry an added responsibility of upholding Native cultural values. Reciprocity is a foundational value for the 577 federally recognized tribes and unrecognized tribes. It prescribes mutual, respectful relations between people, communities, and the natural world. “No one is illegal on stolen land” is a political slogan often heard in the Land Back movement. It’s this ethos that informs the 470 signatures decrying BSNC’s support of ICE’s border control operations. But it’s not an ethos that BSNC shares.

The impact of ICE on tribes isn’t distant and contractual. “Last October, I hired a company to do some work at my house,” said Jessica Senigaq Ullrich, a tribal citizen of the Nome Eskimo Community and a BSNC shareholder. “As they were arriving, ICE agents swooped in and detained one of the workers. I caught it on video.” Days later, at BSNC’s annual meeting, she learned that the corporation in which she had just inherited shares was itself contracting with ICE.

Ullrich, along with Ayyu Qassataq (Iñupiaq/Yupi’k), vice president of the Native Conservancy, and Charlene Aqpik Apok (Iñupiaq), executive director of Data for Indigenous Justice, quickly coordinated the petition demanding BSNC quit collaborating with ICE. The petition, collaboratively drafted in a Google Doc and circulated through personal networks, quickly accrued hundreds of signatures. With this in hand, they approached BSNC’s board. “We gathered hundreds of shareholders to speak clearly about our values, and the response we got was essentially: ‘We’ve received it, and we’ll do what we think is best.’ That’s not accountability,” said Qassataq.

The goal of the petition was to reinforce two facts: There was significant tribal opposition to BSNC’s ICE contracts, and the company owed a share of accountability to its shareholders. ICE contracts expose what happens when those expectations collide.

When the three women followed up with the board to ascertain precisely what they “think is best,” they were met with administrative acknowledgment, followed by silence. “Business decisions are being made in our name, but without transparency or response, there’s no way to understand how they’re aligned with our values, or what they are at all,” said Qassataq. “It feels like we’re speaking into a void: like the structure exists, but the accountability doesn’t.”

But BSNC’s leadership has unclear ties to its shareholders. From 2009 to 2023, Gail Schubert, an Iñupiaq community member, was the firm’s CEO and president. After her departure in May 2023, Dan Graham, who is white, was appointed the interim CEO. “I was talking with different board members, and they kept saying, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna have a hiring process. We’re gonna put it out there,’” said Qassataq. “Then an announcement toward the end of the year said Cindy [Aġnaqhiq Towarak Massie] is now the president; they’ve bifurcated the president and CEO roles. Completely nontransparent process, and there was no opportunity to my knowledge for shareholders to submit résumés or express interest in being part of it.”

Today, Graham remains the CEO and earns $1.4 million per year. Krystal Nelson, who is also white, joined BSNC’s board in 2014 as the executive vice president and earns $1.26 million annually. In 2025, BSNC declared $8.4 million in shareholder dividends. With 8,200 shareholders, each shareholder earned $1,024 in 2025.

The way that BSNC has managed to dodge accountability stands in stark contrast to the ways tribal members have forced other tribal organizations seeking to contract with ICE to reverse course. After the Prairie Band of Potawatomi secured its $30 million federal contract from the DHS to help design ICE’s potential detention centers, tribes criticized the deal and the 4,500-member Prairie Band of Potawatomi fired the business leaders who brokered the deal.

The Oneida Nation’s subsidiary OE-Santec JV LLC also came under fire from its members and other Native Nations for two ICE contracts: $3.8 million for construction services and $2.6 million for facility services. Tribal leaders became aware of the contracts in late December 2025 and moved in January 2026 to terminate the more than $6 million in contracts.

In 2026, the Poarch Creek Tribe’s co-owned firm PCI Guidehouse JV LLC completed a $1.8 million ICE contract providing ICE administrative services. Their tribal chairwoman has not replied to a request for comment on the completed contract or any plans to renew contracts. As Poarch Creek Tribe’s external communications director, Kristin Hellmich, told The New Republic, “Like other tribes who earn federal contracts, Poarch Creek Indians Federal entities have provided professional and technical services across governmental agencies throughout multiple presidential administrations. By delivering valuable and efficient services to U.S. taxpayers year after year since 2008, PCI Federal creates more than one thousand jobs for Tribal Citizens and non-members alike.

“As elected officials of a sovereign nation, the Tribal Council continually takes into account feedback from its Citizens to inform decisions that advance the Tribe’s interests,” she added.

Still, in this instance Poarch Creek leadership at least had to respond—BSNC shareholders are still waiting for an explanation.

Contacted by The New Republic, BSNC declined to comment on its ICE contracts, citing federal disclosure restrictions, and directed inquiries to the Department of Homeland Security. The corporation did not respond to questions about the shareholder petition or executive compensation. Krystal Nelson and Dan Graham did not respond to requests for comment. The DHS also did not respond to requests for comment.

“These corporations are a birthright of Indigenous people. It represents a connection that is an inherent right of us to our homelands and also to our responsibility to those lands. It’s not just a money picture,” said Qassataq. “When it’s reduced to a capitalistic money picture—our bottom line is to provide money to shareholders—it takes something really vital away from us as Native people.”

Ullrich and Qassataq passionately echoed each other, frustrated by the contrast between unknown white executives at BSNC and Alaska Natives’ lived experiences, coping with disenfranchisement and growing climate change devastation. “We still have communities where people are literally shitting into buckets. There’s no running water,” said Qassataq. “I want to know how much these contracts actually equate to in dividends because if you’re going to say this is where we need to be, tell me how a $500 million contract translates to a specific individual check.”

The petition remains unanswered. The contracts remain active.