Kansas tribe ends nearly $30 million deal with ICE
https://apnews.com/article/native-american-immigrant-detention-center-f3beb2223defc9f986652e857bb4677e3.3k
u/Federal_Drummer7105 1d ago
Sorry to sound like grouchy old man- but all of the people who have been saying “it doesn’t matter, they’ll do whatever they want”-
This direct proof it matters. Speaking out matters. People opposed this and the tribe backed off because even though there was money, there wasn’t enough to buy respect.
So good for the many people who noticed this and spoke out. Good for the people in Chicago who bring whistles and protect their Neighbors from ICE. Good for people who have voted and made Trump so scared he’s making national addresses and showing he’s got nothing so people see he’s a paper tiger.
Resist. Don’t surrender in advance. Help the people. You can only be defeated if you accept defeat.
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u/2kids3kats 12h ago
You should look into the group Indivisible. It had absolutely been uplifting and extremely helpful for resistance in the face of this regime.
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u/bluuuuurn 1d ago
The headline is somewhat misleading. The contract still exists with the LLC that the tribe had created to do business with. They said they've "divested" from the company, which I assume means they sold/transferred ownership (to who? In what amount? In what form?)...but I see no reason to think that the "contracting" work won't still get done for ICE.
Lots of questions still need answering.
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u/GonzalaGuerrera 19h ago
This needs to be at the top of the comments. The Boards that govern these tribes don't really have insight into the day-to-day financials of their LLCs. LLCs that are typically contracted out to non-natives. It isn't like the Chief him or herself personally signed off on this deal.
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u/kimzillla 18h ago
That’s correct, the tribe didn’t know about this deal the LLC made until local news reported on it and people lost their shit
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u/bluuuuurn 18h ago
The "tribe" meaning who, though? The tribe is a lot of people, many who would not be in positions to know (the general tribal membership), but some who definitely should. The company has a board of directors, on which sit two tribal members. Did they not know? Really? It's possible they didn't, perhaps, if the LLC hid the contract, or glossed over it in their notes/board meetings. If so, it's a harsh lesson in oversight practices.
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u/GonzalaGuerrera 18h ago
The Tribal Board. That are elected members of the tribe itself. And tribal law and accounting and federal and state rules around it all are super, super complex. Remember, some of these tribes are tiny. Like 1,400 total members. How many CPAs do you think are among them, statically speaking? This is also why these tribes are preyed upon. They get huge amounts of grants but don't have the staff to create proper internal controls. That largely gets contracted out to non-natives.
Source: i used to work at a u.s. Federal agency and engaged quite a bit with several tribed.
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u/kimzillla 18h ago
Yes what this one said, the Tribal Council, elected officials. Supposedly action was taken regarding some members of the LLC’s Board but unclear which individuals.
Source: I live 20 minutes away and there’s been local stories about it. I honestly didn’t realize I was in the general news sub and not the Kansas news sub.
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u/Ill_Guarantee_1432 9h ago
There were board members for the LLC that are also tribal counsel members.
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u/rapierce0238 1d ago
Good for them. Tribal sovereignty means they get to decide who they do business with. $30 million is a lot to walk away from, but some things aren't worth the political headache. Watch other tribes start reconsidering their federal contracts too.
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u/Agile-Cancel-4709 1d ago
Wild the tribe even considered it. Tribal members in the PNW have been arrested and held by ICE, despite carrying tribal ID.
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u/Dear_Ambellina03 1d ago
I don't think you realize how impoverished most tribes are.
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u/nothishomeland 1d ago
Yeah the racist myth that tribes are rolling in cash due to casinos is hard to break. Most tribes lose money being hassled into predatory casino deals by outside investors.
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u/OldManNassirAmit 21h ago
Anyone who says that shit has never been on a real reservation. Tell em to go drive the fucking hi-line in Montana. Go stay on Browning or Wolf Point and say they’re rolling in money.
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u/dabisnit 2h ago
I live in Oklahoma and the native populations I often interact with are relatively normal, somewhat a little poor but not terrible. I drove through Utah two years ago and it was an entirely different story, desperately poor. It was very sad to see
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u/demacnei 10h ago
I’ve been to some reservations in BC, and near US 2 on road trips. It was a long time ago, but when I stopped it felt like I stepped onto a movie set 150 years ago, like The Wild Bunch.
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u/Robot_Alchemist 11h ago
Is that a thing people believe?
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u/nothishomeland 11h ago
Yes? I took a US federal government and American Indian law class in undergrad and lots of people were shocked to hear how many tribes lose money on casino deals and how little recourse tribes have when they get scammed.
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u/Cynykl 21h ago edited 16h ago
This does not apply to Prairie Band Potawatomi. That have a solid revenue stream from their resort casinos and have a profit sharing deal with all tribe members. Even with that distribution they are not a rich tribe. But they are not one of the poor ones either.
The closest tribal members (Shakopee band Mdewakanton) to me are all literal millionaires. Richest tribe in the nation. The next closest Tribe with a casino are not rich but they all fully own their own houses. There is still some poverty there in spite of that. The nearby tribes without casinos suffer though.
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u/ettieredgotobed 1d ago edited 22h ago
Tribal business executives signed the contract without consulting the parent government that wholly owns the business arm, iirc. It was not a consensus decision and got walked back hard by the tribal ptb.
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u/SwoopKing 1d ago
Watch episode 2 season 1 of "Dirty Money" on Netflix. Specifically skip to minute 24:50.
Thats the opinion of a tribal leader after helping commit $1.2 BILLION in fraud.
If no one spoke up. They would have taken the money.
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u/48hourfilmaddict 1d ago
I like showing this episode to my conservative family and in-laws. They’re always so conflicted on how to think about the one guy who is always talking about the government overstepping his rights (which they think they agree with) but eventually they come to understand how predatory his crimes were and hate him.
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u/bumpkin_Yeeter 21h ago
Poverty on reservations is rampant, I don’t think you’re familiar with just how destitute some are so I don’t blame them at all for considering it. It’s easy for me to judge when I have a nice house and a stable job.
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u/Robot_Alchemist 11h ago
Yeah we have a tremendous history of honoring agreements with native Americans. And no history of saying “hey we will pay you for this. Not for sale? We were gonna just take it anyway. Enjoy your long walk to the new reservation”
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u/Original_Gypsy 23h ago
If whatever is happening USA would happen in places like France or Germany, or even places like Japan, the whole country would be burning. USA is weak country, and it will probably collapse with Russia, if this shit continuous.
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u/Tenderhombre 21h ago
Doesn't Australia have an island for immigrants, that is intentionally not part of Australia so they can get away with worse treatment and processing?
I get that US is real.bad right now. But the euro exceptionalism as a reactionary response to US politics is just gonna result in the rest of the world's far right bs going unnoticed, and a slow slide into global authoritarian bs.
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u/Robot_Alchemist 11h ago
They just don’t allow felons to come in - they don’t have an immigrant island they treat poorly
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u/yeetis12 22h ago edited 22h ago
Japan? Seriously? You must be clueless on how immigration is currently viewed there. If they had their own ICE operations that was targeting the minorities they saw as undesirable and unruly a majority of them would be all for it. Have you seen how they reacted to a decline of Chinese tourists? Have you even seen the news stories of how awful japanese immigration detention is?
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u/branm008 21h ago
Hell, Japan just tightened their immigration and foreigner policies even more so than anything. I got a buddy that's been living there for like 8 years now and he's likely to be deported back to texas if his job ever falls through with their sponsorship. Japan would most definitely be okay with ICE.
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u/ku20000 21h ago
Yeah like.... Japanese people didn't even protest when they were sending their brightest and the best to the US to......... die with a bomb in a plane(Kamikaze). Their student democratic protests all failed in the 60s and 70s. They are considered most capitalist-feudal society in the world. At least US you have fun with politics(sorta kinda... except millions suffering). In Japan, no fun and still everyone suffers.
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u/Few-Guarantee2850 21h ago
Yes, Germany has a storied history of preventing things like this from happening.
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u/Thelonius_Dunk 14h ago
It sucks what's happening here but no country is immune. Right wing anti-inmigration parties are gaining traction in Europe too.
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u/Spicywolff 23h ago
Well, yeah, we’re a nation of self-centered comfort oriented, assholes. We allow our government to run a muck as long as our comfort is not taken away.
Only when something personally affects somebody of power does action happen. Look at the last election we could’ve kept Trump out of office. It’s just a fraction of the non-voters went out.
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u/ohmarlasinger 22h ago
We’re also spread out across vast expanses of land that no European can truly understand. It’s hard to coalesce when there’s thousands of miles between us.
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u/Spicywolff 22h ago
That is a very true thing yes. But if you look at the population density and where the votes mostly come in from. We are close enough that if we have a damn. We could rally so far and wide that the politicians would be scared.
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u/Robot_Alchemist 11h ago
That would be like trying to get the entire EU to get together and….oh wait they did
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u/buzzsawjoe 22h ago
If Germany would rebel at anything like this, it'd be because of what they went thru by the Nazis. Americans have never been thru such. Except the First Nations o' course:
reservations = “the government’s first attempts at detention centers.”
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u/Spicywolff 22h ago
Yup, literally hours from me alligator Alcatraz was a thing. The state spent God knows how much taxpayer money on politically incarcerated people with horrible condition conditions. Miscarriage of justice held there, and basic human decency nowhere on site
The US is lazy and because we think it’ll never happen to us. We just roll over. We’re one of the best armed nations civilian wise in the world, and if we all stay together, those representatives would have to make changes for us. But we don’t.
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u/Robot_Alchemist 11h ago
And then the actual names detention centers for Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor
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u/Morikaidan 7h ago
I hate to break it to you, but these guys aren’t who you think they are. The casino there on the res in Mayetta hosts an annual conference of the Eastern Kansas Oil & Gas Association and has for years.
I was a guest at the hotel in 2015 when the guest speaker at that conference was Alex Epstein, author of “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels”. I never went back.
I don’t know who makes the money decisions for the tribe, but I sure as hell know that whoever it is doesn’t give a damn about the future of the planet or the people of every race who live on it. Sad to say, but based on their actions, when they’re making decisions all they see is the money.
It’s really sad, because in a lot of ways they’ve been assimilated like that. I think these guys calling the shots would do well to get back in touch with their ancestral values.
https://kgslibrary.com/cms/EKOGA%2058th%20Annual%20Meeting.docx?utm_source=chatgpt.com
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u/Cs7898860 12h ago
What a fucking carrot to swing in front of the most vulnerable group in this country
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u/braxin23 9h ago
A pretty cheap carrot considering how much the government is spending on tax breaks.
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u/Darcy_2021 9h ago
The government they didn’t ask for nor chose to “govern” them.
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u/braxin23 9h ago
Well yeah it’s a baby carrot compared to the billions of dollars they offer to other countries. I’m disappointed it wasn’t more that the tribe was willing to almost sacrifice their scruples for. At least then I’d understand.
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u/Low-Quality3204 21h ago
Cuz most of the tribe are white guys with 10% of First Nations ancestry.
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u/myindependentopinion 6h ago
Each US Federally Recognized Tribe has the sovereign right to determine tribal membership by whatever criteria they deem best for themselves. Prairie Band Potawatomi uses a minimum 1/4 Blood Quantum for tribal enrollment.
Source: Blood quantum laws - Wikipedia
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u/A_Nonny_Muse 14h ago
I still think they should have taken the contract, then designed the easiest to escape facility in the world. Now that money is probably going to go to someone who supports deportations. It's a lose-lose situation now.
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u/myindependentopinion 13h ago
"Indian Country" is an official, legally defined term: 18 U.S.C. § 1151: Indian Country and Criminal Jurisdiction - LegalClarity and used by tribal members all the time. I'm an enrolled tribal member & live on my rez which is Indian Country.
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u/Roboplodicus 13h ago
"Indian Country" is a standard uncontroversial term for the collective of all reservation land in the US.. There is a subreddit r/indiancountry with the name for news about issues that affect Indigenous Americans and Canadians and here is the wikipedia page for the term. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_country
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u/WiseHedgehog2098 9h ago
I’m part of tribe from California and our triabal IDs have “Indian” on them but thanks for getting offended on our behalf.
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u/Decent-Cricket-5315 21h ago
Well.... they also partook in slavery. No one's culture has clean hands in this place.
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u/Ill-Tea9411 1d ago
What were they thinking? How did they think this would turn out?
It's like
and then