Red Lake Nation cautions tribal members to prepare for, report interactions with ICE

A line formed down the hallway at the Red Lake Nation government center throughout Tuesday as enrolled members followed directives from tribal council to prepare and get their tribal IDs in the event they are questioned or detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Typically there's a $20 fee to get a tribal ID. But the tribe waived fees as an influx of members came in this week in response to President Donald Trump's immigration raids and executive order Friday eliminating birthright citizenship, a constitutional right for everyone born in the United States. A federal judge temporarily blocked the order after 22 states quickly challenged Trump's directive.

"That's Trump. He's not logical," said Red Lake Tribal Chair Darrell Seki Sr. in an interview Tuesday with the Minnesota Star Tribune.

On Seki's desk sat the latest letter from the Trump administration: a federal funding freeze. Seki called for a special tribal council meeting Wednesday to discuss the freeze and the immigration raids by ICE that have affected Indigenous communities in Southern states, where tribal leaders were the first to issue warnings to members on how to be prepared.

"In his first term, he targeted Native American tribes, and we already expected it after he won," Seki said. "We already knew what was going to happen, and it's happened."

Red Lake appears to be the first tribal government in Minnesota to issue public warnings and cautionary measures to its members. Last week the Navajo Nation sounded the alarm after reports of at least 15 Indigenous people in Arizona and New Mexico being stopped, questioned or detained during immigration raids. Those Native Americans were asked to show proof of citizenship.

Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1924.

Seki said he's concerned, but so far there have been no reports of any of Red Lake's 17,000 enrolled members being detained by ICE. About half of the enrolled members live in the Twin Cities, where the tribe's embassy confirmed one reported case of a Red Lake woman questioned by ICE when she and her children were with a Central American man, said Joe Plumer, legal counsel for Red Lake.

Red Lake wants all enrolled members to be equipped with proper identification, such as their tribal IDs or Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood (CDIB), an official U.S. document issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

Plumer said some enrolled members in the Twin Cities have less-ready access to get tribal IDs as members living in Red Lake. So the secretary's office is working with folks to make that more readily available.

Red Lake Tribal Council also shared a form online asking enrolled members to fill it out if they have been detained or questioned by ICE since January.

Like other tribal governments across the country urging residents to report any encounters with ICE, Red Lake is asking members to share details "for the purpose of demonstrating the improper activities of ICE," the form says.

Red Lake band members are asked to provide a detailed description of their interaction with ICE, such as the number of officers involved, types of questions asked or any other relevant details of the interaction.

Plumer said no one had filled out the form yet. But they wanted to notify people and collect data.

"If it becomes a big problem, that data will be useful," he said.

In addition, Plumer said the tribe reached out to law enforcement to express concerns about the potential of enrolled members being harassed by ICE or border patrol under the new directive of the Trump administration.

"And the response that we got from our law enforcement was that ICE already knows who they're after," Plumer said.

A couple of border patrol agents are based out of Bemidji, Beltrami County Sheriff Jason Riggs said. Red Lake Nation is within Beltrami County, but the agency has no jurisdiction over the tribe.

Plumer said agents are looking for undocumented people convicted of crimes from Mexico or South America.

"There might be some tribal members that are associated with them that get caught in the net, but if we make these protections for tribal members to have identification and show who they are and where they're from, that they're not likely to get caught in the net to the same degree," he said.

"Speaking frankly, we have a problem with Mexican drug dealers big time. People are dying because the stuff [fentanyl] they're bringing in. So frankly, you know, we're for getting rid of those people."

This story contains information from the Associated Press.