Mayetta, Kansas– the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nationwhose ancestors were uprooted from the Great Lakes region by the United States in the 1830s, face ire from fellow Native Americans over their plans to profit from another forced removal: President Donald Trump’s campaign. Mass deportation campaign.
A newly created tribal business entity quietly signed a nearly $30 million federal contract in October to come up with an early design for immigration detention centers across the U.S. amid the backlash the tribe says it is trying to get out of.
Tribal leaders and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to detailed questions about why the company was chosen for such a large contract without having to compete for the work as federal contracting typically requires. A former Navy officer — who markets himself as a “certified” advisor to tribes and affiliates seeking federal contracts — founded the affiliate, KPB Services LLC, in April.
Criticism was so severe that the 4,500-member tribe said it had fired economic development leaders who brokered the deal.
“We are known throughout the country now as traitors and traitors to another race of people,” said Ray Rice, 74, who said he and other tribal members were shocked. “We are brown and they are brown.”
Tribal leader Joseph “Zeke” Rupnik promised “full transparency” about what he described as an “evolving situation.” He said in a video message to tribe members on Friday that the tribe is talking with the legal advisor about ways to terminate the contract.
He alluded to the time when federal agents forcibly removed hundreds of Prairie Band Potawatomi families from their homes and eventually detained them on a reservation just north of Topeka.
“We know that our Indian reservations were the government’s first attempts at detention centers,” Rupnick said in the video message. “We were put here because we were prisoners of war. So we must ask ourselves why we participate in something that reflects the damage and trauma that was once inflicted on our people.”
US Supreme Court He paved the way in September for federal agents To conduct large-scale immigration raids and use apparent race as a relevant factor to stop. With some Native Americans arrested and detained in recent raids, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s initiatives toward tribes, and even long-term deals, are generating more scrutiny.
A limited liability company owned by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama also entered into a multimillion-dollar contract with ICE to provide financial and administrative services. Meanwhile, some Alaska Native shareholders say their values don’t align with the company’s federal contract division, Akima, to provide security at several Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities.
“I was shocked that any tribal nation would want to help the U.S. government with this,” said Brittany McCain, a 29-year-old member of the Muskogee Nation who teaches at a tribal college in Oklahoma.
some Tribal nations It advised its citizens to carry tribal IDs.
Last month, actress Eileen Miles said she was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, claiming her Confederated Tribal ID on the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon was fake.
Tribes’ economic arms, which can be run by non-Indigenous people, are under increasing pressure to generate revenue due to population decline. Federal fundingHigh inflation and competition from Online gamblingsaid Gabe Galanda, an indigenous rights attorney based in Seattle.
Galanda, a member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in Northern California, said the economic opportunities offered to tribes do not always align with their values.
Prairie Band Potawatomi has a range of companies that provide staff for health care administration, general contracting and even interior design.
The tribal branch hired by ICE — KPB Services LLC — is based in Holton, Kan., and is not listed on the tribe’s website. It has previously qualified with dozens of other companies to provide logistical support for the U.S. Navy, though it has not done any work for the federal government yet.
The ICE contract was initially awarded in October for $19 million for unspecified “due diligence and conceptual designs” for processing centers and detention centers across the United States, according to a one-sentence description of the work on the federal government’s real-time contracting database. It was amended a month later to increase the payout cap to $29.9 million. Single-source contracts worth more than $30 million require additional justification under federal contracting rules.
Attorney Joshua Schnell, who specializes in federal contract law, said the contract raises a number of questions and appears to conflict with the Trump administration’s stated goal of cleaning up waste, fraud and abuse.
“Public confidence in the federal procurement system depends on transparency and competition,” Schnell said. “Although there is a role within this system for multi-million-dollar single-source contracts, these contracts are an exception to statutory competition requirements, and taxpayers have a right to know how the government is spending their money.”
It is unclear what the tribal council knew about the contract. A tribal council spokesman did not respond to repeated requests from the AP for details, including who was fired.
What is known is that KPB was registered by Ernest C. Woodward Jr., a retired U.S. Navy officer with degrees in engineering and business and a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, according to the website for his one-time consulting firm, Burton Woodward Partners LLC.
The website described Woodward as a serial entrepreneur and tribal consultant on mergers and acquisitions, access to capital and obtaining federal contracts. The consulting company was registered at an office complex in Sarasota, Florida, in 2017 but was delisted two years later after failing to file an annual report.
The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation said in a 2017 news release that Woodward advised it on its acquisition of another government contractor, Mill Creek LLC, which specializes in outfitting federal and military buildings with office furniture and medical equipment.
Woodward is also listed as chief operating officer of the Florida branch of Prairie Band Construction Inc., which was registered in September.
Attempts to locate Woodward were unsuccessful. The phone number listed for Burton Woodward Partners was disconnected, and he did not respond to an email sent to another of its advisory firms, Virginia-based Chinkapin Partners LLC.
Carol Caddo-Blackwood, who has Prairie Band Potawatomi ancestry and is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Kansas, hopes the decade will end. She was part of the fight against the opening of an ICE detention center in Leavenworth, Kansas, and works at a Native American social service agency.
“I am in absolute disbelief that this happened,” she said.
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas, and Goodman from Miami. Graham Lee Brewer in Norman, Oklahoma, and Haley Golden in Seattle contributed to this report.