A Native American tribe in Kansas is having main remorse after quietly inking a cope with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—the pariah of a authorities company often known as ICE.
The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, by a newly established tribal entity known as KPB Providers LLC, signed a virtually $30 million cope with the company in October to offer idea designs for immigrant processing and detention amenities throughout the U.S.
Now, tribe leaders are attempting to get out of it.
When tribal members caught wind of the settlement, backlash naturally adopted.
“We are known across the nation now as traitors and treasonous to another race of people,” Ray Rice, a 74-year-old tribe member, advised The Related Press. “We are brown and they’re brown,” he stated of the immigrants which might be being detained throughout the nation as a part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
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Rice advised the AP that he and different tribal members had been blindsided by the deal.
The person behind KPB Providers LLC, the Related Press reported, is a former Navy officer who works with tribes and affiliated corporations to safe federal contracts. However this one, given the historic therapy of Native People by settlers, crossed a line.
Within the 1830s, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation tribe’s forebears had been forcibly uprooted by the federal government from their properties throughout the Nice Lakes area.
The 4,500-member tribe now had a reservation close to Mayetta, Kansas, and its financial growth leaders had been fired within the aftermath of the ill-advised authorities contract.
“We all know our Indian reservations had been the federal government’s first makes an attempt at detention facilities,” Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick stated in a video posted to YouTube Friday.
“We were placed here because we were treated as prisoners of war. So we must ask ourselves why we would ever participate in something that mirrors the harm and trauma once done to our people?” he requested.
Tribal members have loads of purpose to be upset over the transfer. And on prime of the Trump administration blocking billions of {dollars} in funding meant to help their communities, Native People have additionally discovered themselves within the crosshairs of ICE’s assaults.
A number of analyses have discovered that ICE’s important detainment targets, numbering 9 out of 10 arrests within the first half of 2025, had been Latino.
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And since the Supreme Courtroom gave the inexperienced mild for ICE officers to racially profile folks on the road, actually anybody with brown pores and skin is in danger, together with Native People—and plenty of indigenous folks have already mistakenly been questioned and even arrested in sweeping ICE raids.
It’s unclear if the tribe will have the ability to get out of the deal, Rupnick stated, however leaders are presently exploring their authorized choices.
