A Kansas tribe said it has walked away from a nearly $30 million federal contract to come up with preliminary designs for immigrant detention centers after facing a wave of online criticism.
The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation ‘s announcement Wednesday night came just over a week after the economic development leaders who brokered the deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were fired.
With some Native Americans swept up and detained in recent ICE raids, the deal was derided online as “disgusting” and “cruel.” Many in Indian Country also questioned how a tribe whose own ancestors were uprooted two centuries ago from the Great Lakes region and corralled on a reservation south of Topeka could participate in the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.
Tribal Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick nodded to the historic issues last week in a video address that called reservations “the government’s first attempts at detention centers.” In an update Wednesday, he announced that he was “happy to share that our Nation has successfully exited all third-party related interests affiliated with ICE.”
The Prairie Band Potawatomi has a range of businesses that provide health care management staffing, general contracting and even interior design. And Rupnick said in his latest address that tribal officials plan to meet in January about how to ensure “economic interests do not come into conflict with our values in the future.”
A tribal offshoot hired