The president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota is demanding the release of three tribal members detained by ICE officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota last Friday.
The detained tribal members were transferred to an ICE facility at Fort Snelling. The three were homeless and living under a bridge in Minneapolis, according to Frank Star Comes Out, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. Star Comes Out said the detainees are “citizens of the United States by statute and citizens of the Oglala Sioux Nation by treaty.”
“The Oglala Sioux Tribe’s memorandum makes clear that ‘tribal citizens are not aliens’ and are ‘categorically outside immigration jurisdiction,’” Star Comes Out said in a statement shared to his Facebook page. “This is a treaty violation. Treaties are not optional. Sovereignty is not conditional. Our citizens are not negotiable,” he said.
In a memorandum sent to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Star Comes Out said the agency only provided tribal authorities with the first names of the detainees, refusing to release more information, unless the tribe “entered into an immigration agreement with ICE.”
“We will not enter an agreement that would authorize, or make it easier for, ICE or Homeland Security to come onto our tribal homeland to arrest or detain our tribal members,” Star Comes Out said. At the time of writing, the DHS has not responded to the tribal inquests.
Indigenous Americans have found themselves as a target of ICE officers as immigration crackdowns continue throughout the country. Actress Elaine Miles, a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, said she was detained by ICE officers in November, who reportedly called her tribal ID “fake.”
“Anyone can make that,” Miles recalled an agent saying.
