Private Company Running Guantánamo Immigrant Jail Is Accused of Rights Abuses

The U.S. military transported 17 new immigrant detainees to the Guantánamo Bay military base on Sunday, just before efforts to jail an anticipated 30,000 immigrants in tent camps at the base were halted over concerns the makeshift facilities don’t meet ICE’s detention standards. Now the private federal contractor behind the Guantánamo detention site is under renewed scrutiny. Investigative journalist José Olivares shares what we know about Akima Infrastructure Protection, an Alaska Native corporation that counts among its myriad federal contracts immigration detention facilities across the United States, including some that are currently under investigation for human rights abuses. The lack of transparency when it comes to the company’s practices and the expansion of migrant detention at a high-security location like Guantánamo means that questions remain over current conditions and even the exact number of people who have been incarcerated there, explains Olivares.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is visiting Guantánamo today in his first visit to the notorious naval base since he was confirmed amidst growing criticism of the transfer and detention of migrants there. On Monday, the Trump administration halted plans to house detained migrants in tent structures at Guantánamo over concerns the facilities don’t meet detention standards set by ICE — that’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The tents lack electricity and air conditioning.

Earlier this month, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem visited Guantánamo days after the first detained immigrants were flown there, and claimed, without evidence, that people deported there were dangerous criminals.

HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY KRISTI NOEM: These individuals are the worst of the worst that we pulled off of our streets, so —

DANA BASH: Who are they?

HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY KRISTI NOEM: Murderers, rapists. When I was there, I was able to watch one of the flights landing and them unload about 15 different of these criminals. Those were mainly child pedophiles, those that were out there trafficking children, trafficking drugs, and were pulled off of our streets and put at this facility.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was Kristi Noem, now the head of the Department of Homeland Security. The New York Times just had an exposé on a woman in Colombia, who’s Venezuelan, who saw her brother in video coming to Guantánamo, and she said, “My brother is not a dangerous criminal come. He came into the United States.” The administration talked about the tattoos, these people are members of gangs. And she said his tattoos are of Michael Jordan because he loves Michael Jordan.

Well, last week, as the Trump administration abruptly deported 177 Venezuelan migrants who had been detained at Guantánamo, they admitted that 50 of them had no criminal record, apart from entering the U.S. unlawfully.

Meanwhile, five Senate Democrats, led by Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, sent a letter to President Trump Monday challenging the transfer of migrants to Guantánamo as “illegal and unjustified,” calling the move, quote, “unprecedented, unlawful and harmful to American national security, values and interests,” the letter says. It goes on, “There is no basis in U.S. immigration law for transferring noncitizens arrested inside the United States to a location outside of the United States for detention prior to or for the purpose of conducting removal proceedings,” unquote.

We turn now to a new investigation that reveals how the private corporation running the migrant detention center at Guantánamo has a history of rights abuses at other migrant detention facilities in the United States. The conglomerate is called Akima. It has over 40 subsidiaries and more than 2,000 contracts with the U.S. government. Last year, the Biden administration awarded a contract to run the Guantánamo Migrant Operations Center to Akima subsidiary.

We’re joined here in New York by investigative reporter José Olivares, whose latest piece for The Guardian is headlined “Revealed: US firm running Guantánamo migrant jail accused over rights abuses.”

José, it’s great to have you with us. Lay out what you found.

JOSÉ OLIVARES: Thank you so much, Amy.

Yes, so, obviously, the Guantánamo naval base has a long history, and it’s notorious for the military prison that has housed “war on terror” detainees. There’s been allegations of torture and abuse there. But what really the public didn’t know too much prior to Trump’s executive order is that for decades there has existed a migrant detention center at the Guantánamo naval base. Now, this facility is divided into two. One part of it is run by the State Department, and the other part of it is run by ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Now, ICE, what I found is that last year, the Biden administration gave the ICE contract to Akima Infrastructure Protection, which is this massive, massive federal government contractor. And this contract is worth $163.4 million to run the Migrant Operations Center, which is what it’s called. Now, technically, it is at the naval base, so it’s extremely secretive. We don’t know how operations take place, what the conditions are like for migrants there. But what’s important to note is that for decades this facility has been used to detain migrants, primarily those who are fleeing from the Caribbean, trying to make it to the U.S., and are intercepted at sea by the Coast Guard. Now, when they are intercepted at sea, they’re sent to the Migration Operations Center, where they are held and detained and processed, and sometimes either deported back to their home countries or repatriated to third nations.

However, what I found with this investigation is that for decades, since the early 2000s, since the Bush administration, private contractors have been running this detention center. First, it first started with GEO Group, one of the biggest private prison companies in the U.S. Then it moved to MVM, Incorporated, which is a defense contractor. And now, last year, the Biden administration gave Akima this massive contract to run the facility for at least five years.

What is also important to note here is that because it’s on the naval base, it is extremely secretive. So, we didn’t know that throughout various presidential administrations, from Bush to Obama to Trump to Biden and now under Trump again, migrants have been held at this ICE facility that is at Guantánamo. There’s been no public oversight over the facility. There haven’t been any public reports, even though they’re congressionally mandated by members of Congress to publish reports about the conditions in the facility.

But what I also found is that this company, Akima Infrastructure Protection, is part of a larger conglomerate called Akima. And Akima has over 40 subsidiaries. It’s a massive, massive company that contracts with the government. And this company also runs other Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities throughout the U.S. I was able to find at least five of them, and three of them were really widely criticized for the conditions inside and for the treatment of migrants around the U.S.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, José, who runs this company? How did it manage to gather so many federal contracts? Could you talk a little bit about its history and the personalities involved, if any, that you found?

JOSÉ OLIVARES: Absolutely. So, the history of Akima is actually quite, quite fascinating. It’s a member of the Nana Regional Corporation, which is an Alaskan Native corporation. Now, Alaskan Native corporations were created in the ’70s. They were created sort of in response to protests and social movements in order for the federal government to kind of grant Indigenous people in Alaska federal contracts and just more opportunities, you know, within their communities. And so, the Nana Regional Corporation, it is owned by primarily Indigenous people in Alaska. It is an Alaskan Native corporation. So, all of the shares, all of the — everything is owned by Native Alaskan people.

But within the Nana Regional Corporation is Akima. And within Akima is these 40 different subsidiaries. And these 40 different subsidiaries have dozens upon dozens upon dozens of federal government contracts. They work with dozens of federal agencies. They work with the Department of Defense. They work with the Department of Interior. They work with ICE. I found one instance in which one of the Akima’s subsidiaries was hired to do maintenance of helicopters in Saudi Arabia for the military, but also to train Saudi military forces — just, you know, different IT services, infrastructure. So it’s a massive government, federal government contractor.

However, because it is an Alaskan Native corporation, the shares for the company can’t be traded, they can’t be sold, so it’s able to sort of escape any sort of regulation from the Securities and Exchange Commission. But because of its status as an Alaskan Native corporation and because of the, you know, over 40 subsidiaries that Akima has, it’s able to very quickly get contracts that are supposed to be allocated from the federal government to small businesses. So, they’re technically a small business that is minority-owned, and that’s how they’re able to sort of get these, you know, over 2,000 federal contracts.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And talking again about the Guantánamo detention center, what’s the situation in terms of detainees, immigrant detainees there, and their access to lawyers?

JOSÉ OLIVARES: Yeah, so, the access to lawyers is extremely limited. And this has been ongoing, you know, for decades that the migrant detention center has existed at the Guantánamo naval base.

Now, what’s important to note is that the Migrant Operations Center, which is what it’s called, is separate from the military prison. But what we do understand from the Trump administration’s actions is that migrants who were detained in the U.S. and then sent to Guantánamo for further detention, they were housed both at the military — at the military installations, the military prison, and at the Migrant Operations Center. Now, this Migrant Operations Center is divided into two sections: One section is run by ICE, one is run by the State Department. But we just don’t know exactly how many people are detained there, because of the lack of transparency that, again, spans decades and spans various presidential administrations.

Now, I think what’s important to note here is that because it is at the naval base, it’s in Cuba, right? So, migrants who, historically, primarily have fled from Haiti, from Cuba, from the Caribbean have been intercepted at sea and then have been sent to the Guantánamo facility for further processing. But we just don’t know how many have been sent there. Some estimates that I saw in some of the government contracting records show that between 2021 and 2024, there have been between four and 40 migrants who have been detained there. But this Migrant Operations Center, what is interesting about it and what I found with the federal government contracting records is that it has the capacity to hold 120 migrants, 120 people. But ICE requires the contractor to be able to expand the facility with a tent city to detain up to 400 migrants.

So, you know, there’s a lot of unanswered questions here. There is a lack of transparency. We don’t know what the conditions are like. And because migrants historically who have been detained there have either been deported to their home countries or sent to a third country, we don’t hear too much about — from the migrants themselves who have been detained there, because they primarily really haven’t been brought to the U.S.

AMY GOODMAN: And would these migrants sent to Guantánamo be counted under deportees, because this is area controlled by the U.S. in Cuba, so they’re just being sent there, not deported?

JOSÉ OLIVARES: Correct, yes. So, they’re still under the custody of ICE and the Department of Defense.

AMY GOODMAN: And final question, and we just have about a minute: The human rights abuses that Akima has been found guilty of?

JOSÉ OLIVARES: That’s right. So, three different facilities have faced severe, severe criticism. There is one facility in Florida called the North Krome processing center, which is owned by Akima, and the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General did a federal audit at the facility and found various instances of inappropriate use of force, including one case that I found in which guards at this facility opened the slot to the solitary confinement door of a man who was detained there and pepper-sprayed him, despite him showing no resistance or threat to anybody else. There’s also a lawsuit for forced labor at the Buffalo detention center in upstate New York. And there’s also been criticism of one of the solitary confinement units in Texas that it runs.

AMY GOODMAN: And finally, 30 seconds, you wrote a piece for Drop Site, “Biden gave Trump the blueprint to lock up 30,000 migrants in a private ICE jail at Guantánamo Bay.”

JOSÉ OLIVARES: That’s right, yeah. I think it’s important to recognize that this deportation system, this Guantánamo migrant detention center, has been passed down from administration to administration. There really — you know, from Democrats to Republicans, there has been no significant change between administrations.

AMY GOODMAN: José Olivares, I want to thank you for being with us, investigative journalist. We’ll link to your piece in The Guardian, “Revealed: US firm running Guantánamo migrant jail accused over rights abuses,” as well as your piece for Drop Site about Biden giving Trump the blueprint. We’ll also do an interview with you in Spanish after the show and post it on our Spanish website at democracynow.org.

Next up, we look at the nonprofit DAWN filing a complaint with the International Criminal Court against Biden, Blinken and Secretary of Defense Austin over Israel’s war in Gaza. Stay with us.