Oglala Sioux Tribe says it cannot confirm tribal members were detained by ICE in Minneapolis
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Frank Star Comes Out, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, said he and other council members have not been able to verify that unhoused Oglala tribal members have been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Minneapolis.
Star Comes Out partially walked back those earlier statements regarding the status of tribal members during a news conference held Friday at the Minneapolis American Indian Center.
“I reached out to federal, state, and tribal officials to verify the report and if the report proved to be accurate, to secure the release of any illegally detained tribal members,” Star Comes Out said.
“We were informed today that ICE has no record of arresting Oglala Sioux tribal members in Minneapolis. We will continue to monitor the situation to ensure that tribal members are protected and their rights are not violated.”
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In a statement made more than a week ago, Star Comes Out had announced that four unhoused men had been detained by ICE in Minneapolis near the intersection of 24th Street and Cedar Avenue.
On Tuesday, Star Comes Out released another statement saying tribal attorneys were attempting to locate the three men they believed were still in ICE custody at the detention center at the Whipple Federal Building.
In a brief interview with MPR News prior to the news conference, Star Comes Out said that he and other officials were acting on a report made on Jan. 8. by a tribal member who said she has witnessed ICE detain the four men.
“She reported that four unhoused relatives were being detained. But because she didn't know who the gentlemen were, she couldn't get any names,” said Star Comes Out. “We inquired, we took that information, and we started running it with our state, our federal, state and local leaders. We haven't confirmed anything.”
Star Comes Out says he and other council members made the trip to Minneapolis to gather information and support their tribal members living in the Twin Cities metropolitan area as ICE operations surge.
During Friday’s news conference, Oglala Sioux Tribe Council member Garfield Steele added that he and others spoke with ICE officials inside the Whipple Federal Building Thursday afternoon.
“They told us that they don't hold anyone longer than eight to ten hours, and they never held anyone longer than twenty [hours],” said Steele.
“We asked if there was a possibility that these tribal members were transported to another facility. They told us that their database don't show that there was any Native Americans that were in their facility transferred to anywhere else.”
MPR News reached out to ICE for comment but didn’t receive a response. According to the Associated Press, “The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it can’t verify claims that any of their officers arrested or ‘even encountered’ members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe or found anyone in their detention centers claiming to be a tribal member.”
Officials from the Oglala Sioux Tribe were joined at the news conference by tribal leaders from Bois Forte Band of Chippewa, Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe, and the Prairie Island Indian Community. Over the past week, a handful of Native Americans in the Twin Cities have used social media to document being stopped or detained by ICE, prompting action from tribal and civic leaders.
