As Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity surges nationwide under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign, some Native Americans have been detained alongside immigrants.
And while Republicans acknowledge that it’s wrong, they won’t provide an answer as to how Congress or the Trump administration could prevent it from happening. Instead, they say that the detainment of Native Americans – and other U.S. citizens – is part of a broader operation in which, as Rep. Addison McDowell put it, “There will be mistakes.”
“That’s not great if that’s happening,” McDowell, a member of the House Committee on Natural Resources’ subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs, said. He added that there are “millions” of people who need to be deported and that “it’s not going to be a perfect process trying to get all of them out.”
Native American community members have increasingly been stopped, detained and harassed by ICE solely because of their skin color or names, tribal leaders told The Washington Post.
In recent weeks, at least five Native American men have reportedly been detained in Minneapolis, according to Indian Country Today. In Phoenix, a Navajo man said he was detained for hours earlier this month, even after he presented documentation of his tribal citizenship and his birth certificate. Elaine Miles – a Native American actor known for television roles in shows like HBO’s “The Last of Us” said she was questioned in Washington state in December by an ICE agent who directly asked, “Are you Mexican?” according to Seattle’s NPR station.
The number of Native Americans who have been erroneously detained is unclear, but it’s a large enough problem that tribal officials across several states have begun to warn members about ICE operations and inform their communities about what to do if ICE stops them. They are briefing members on their rights and setting up help hotlines, as well as making connections to mutual aid groups.
“The administration is targeting any person of color at the present moment and violating both the civil and due process rights of countless Americans,” said Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, a vice chair of the Congressional Native American Caucus. “I don’t think we should be giving another penny to ICE until they reform whatever is happening.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. And congressional Republicans are downplaying the issue, including some who represent districts with large Native American constituencies.
“I think they’re doing the best they can with the information they have,” said Rep. Kevin Hern of Oklahoma, a state that is home to 38 federally recognized tribes. Another Oklahoma representative and a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, Rep. Josh Brecheen, said law enforcement has “to be reactionary.”
“As people are learning and growing and trying to do their best to protect and serve, we have to understand where we’ve come from, so that the greater good is being accomplished,” Brecheen said.
The comments from Republican lawmakers echo those made by Trump last Tuesday, when he told reporters that in the case of Renee Good – one of two U.S. citizens shot and killed by federal agents this month – that, “They’re gonna make mistakes sometimes. ICE is going to be too rough with somebody.”
ProPublica in October reported that ICE has held more than 170 U.S. citizens as part of its ongoing raids, including a Mescalero Apache tribe member who the outlet reported was pulled out of a store and asked for his passport.
Several Republican members of the House subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs said they were not aware of Native Americans being swept up in ongoing ICE operations. When asked what the administration should do to prevent these errors, many Republicans did not engage with the question.
“I wasn’t aware that they had arrested Native Americans, but hopefully they resolved it and set them free if they hadn’t broken the law,” said Rep. Bruce Westerman, a member of the subcommittee.
Rep. Yassamin Ansari of Arizona, a Democrat from a state with 22 federally recognized tribes, said she’s been in communication with tribal leaders in her district and other Democratic members of the Arizona delegation about the topic. She said they haven’t seen a willingness from Republicans to work on the issue.
Ansari said she has been in conversation with Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community, and said that the racial profiling that leads to the detainment of Native Americans started early last year.
“They’re also being very retaliatory,” Ansari said of ICE operations on tribal land. “They are essentially forcing the tribal communities to allow them on their land, and they have been threatening retaliation.”
Rep. Adelita Grijalva, another Arizona Democrat and member of the House Committee on Natural Resources’ subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs, has pushed for federal law enforcement, including ICE, to accept tribal identification cards at border crossings and at any interaction with tribal communities since before she was elected to Congress. Many Native American nations, she said as an example, span across the U.S.-Mexico border, and tribal communities have had difficulty crossing with their tribal identification cards.
With the increased ICE activity around tribal lands, however, she said those efforts are more important than ever. “What we need to understand is that the indigenous tribes were there before we were. The tribal identification should be enough for the harassment to end,” Grijalva said. “Unfortunately, it isn’t always, and then it requires each nation to get involved to try to get their person out of detention, and we know how quickly they’re moving people from one state to the other to avoid having any legal intervention.”
And Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat whose Minneapolis district has seen some of the largest ICE operations in the country and where there have been instances of Native American citizens being detained, said, “The fact that they have their tribal ID and are not being recognized as indigenous people tells you just how unlawful these stops and detentions are.”
“It is unconscionable that they are being forced today in the United States of America to prove that they are citizens,” Omar said.
