The Alaska House Judiciary Committee will convene at 1 pm on June 20 to hear from opponents of the Alaska Department of Corrections contract allowing it to hold federal immigration detainees inside Alaska correctional institutions.
The hearing will feature invitation-only testimony from individuals and organizations who are anti-ICE in general, including the ACLU, which was one of the sponsors of the No Kings protests across the nation on Saturday.
The committee will receive testimony from the immigration attorney Nicolas Olano of Nations Law Group, the Alaska Civil Liberties Union’s Cindy Woods, and representatives from the Civil Division of the Alaska Department of Law. House Democrats are clearly intending to re-elevate this into the news cycle. On June 9, the Party for Socialism and Liberation made noise about the contract by staging a protest march to the Anchorage Correctional Complex.
The testimony is expected to examine legal, humanitarian, and financial implications of Alaska’s arrangement with the federal immigration agency, which, under President Donald Trump, is treating border law as enforceable, rather than merely a suggestion, as it as under President Joe Biden. Alaska is holding about 40 known illegal immigration detainees under an agreement with ICE at the state-run Anchorage Correctional Complex.
Committee Chair Rep. Andrew Gray, who called for the hearing, is an Anchorage Democrat. The hearing will be held at the Anchorage Legislative Information Offices at 1 pm in the Denali Room.
