Today, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Alaska, with ACLU National Prison Project and Rosen Bien Galvan & Grunfeld LLP, released a new report, Sent Away and Silenced, detailing what happened one year ago, when on June 8, 2025, ICE transferred 41 detainees from the Lower 48 to the Anchorage Correctional Complex and highlighting the abuses that occur when a civil legal process is routed through a punitive, opaque, and dangerous carceral system.
The report is based on the direct testimony of numerous impacted individuals, including sworn statements from 14 of the detainees, declarations from their attorneys, and public records. This group, all men, included both asylum-seekers who had recently come to the United States seeking humanitarian protection and immigrants who had lived lawfully in the country for decades. Without notice, they were transferred from an ICE facility in Tacoma, Washington, to Alaska and were held at Anchorage Correctional Center (ACC) for 23 days. They were isolated from their loved ones and attorneys; processed through jail practices that collapsed any meaningful distinction between civil administrative custody and criminal incarceration, and held in conditions that denied them due process and predictably harmed their physical and mental health and dignity.
“The situation that these immigrant detainees encountered during their transfer from Tacoma, Washington, to Anchorage and while detained at ACC, was inhumane and traumatizing, said Cindy Woods, Senior Staff Attorney for Immigrants’ Rights with the ACLU of Alaska. “Drawing directly from their sworn declarations and the public record, this report shines a light on the treatment of immigrants within ACC. Alaskans deserve to know how our government is using its resources to support the federal government’s mass deportation agenda and its rippling impact on our communities.”
Sent Away and Silenced documents the longstanding Intergovernmental Service Agreement that provided for the unilateral decision-making by the Alaska Department of Corrections (DOC), which operates ACC, to accept these ICE detainees without any notice to state or local elected officials or the public. This approach effectively bypassed democratic oversight, and left Alaskans learning about the operation only after people were already in ACC custody. Alaskans also learned later of the horrific conditions of confinement that the civil detainees encountered, including a use-of-force incident that caused physical and emotional harm to many of the detainees.
The report includes suggestions that the ACLU of Alaska has previously provided to lawmakers, the Department of Corrections, and ICE officials to align with federal law and fundamental civil confinement norms. Recommendations include:
- For state policymakers: Enact independent oversight for all detainees held in state custody.
- For DOC: Pause all additional transfers of ICE detainees until civil detention standards can be met and create a quality assurance and accountability process to ensure all staff are trained and held accountable for upholding these standards.
- For ICE: Evaluate ACC’s compliance with federal detention standards and halt further transfers to Alaska until civil detention standards are ensured in practice.
“We are concerned not to have seen any meaningful changes from the state or federal government to address the issues that were first identified almost a year ago today,” said Woods. “While we haven’t heard of further transfers to ACC from Outside, we know that DOC has held at least 48 Alaskans for ICE this year alone. Carceral conditions of confinement and lack of access to counsel persist today.”
You can read the full report and findings here: https://www.acluak.org/publications/sent-away-and-silenced-report/
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