The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation faces backlash for plans tied to Trump’s mass deportation campaign, drawing outrage from Indigenous communities.
In October, a recently formed tribal corporate company discreetly inked a roughly $30 million federal contract to develop an early design for immigration detention facilities across the United States. The tribe claims it is attempting to escape the wrath.
In-depth inquiries regarding why the company was chosen for such a large contract without having to compete for the work, as government contracting typically requires, have not been addressed by tribal authorities or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. A former navy officer positions himself as the "go-to" consultant for tribes and related businesses looking to secure federal contracts.
The 4,500-member tribe claimed to have fired the economic development chiefs who mediated the agreement due to the harsh criticism.
“We are known across the nation now as traitors and treasonous to another race of people,”
said Ray Rice, a 74-year-old who said he and other tribal members were blindsided.
“We are brown and they’re brown.”
Joseph "Zeke" Rupnick, the tribal chairman, pledged "full transparency" over what he called a "changing situation." He said the tribe is discussing methods to terminate the contract with legal counsel in a video message sent to tribal members on Friday.
He made reference to the period when hundreds of Prairie Band Potawatomi families were forcibly taken from their homes by federal agents and eventually gathered on a reservation located just north of Topeka.
“We know our Indian reservations were the government’s first attempts at detention centers,”
Rupnick said
in the video message.
“We were placed here because we were prisoners of war. So we must ask ourselves why we would ever participate in something that mirrors the harm and the trauma once done to our people.”
In September, the U.S. Supreme Court gave federal agents permission to carry out large-scale immigration raids and consider perceived ethnicity when making a stop. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's overtures to tribes and even long-standing agreements are coming under more scrutiny after some Native Americans were swept up and arrested in recent raids.
Additionally, ICE has a multimillion-dollar deal with an LLC owned by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama for financial and administrative services. In the meantime, shareholders of an Alaska Native company claim that their principles conflict with those of the company's government contracting branch, Akima, which provides security at various ICE detention sites.
Certain tribal nations have recommended that their citizens carry tribal identification.
Actor Elaine Miles claimed that ICE authorities stopped her last month and claimed that her ID from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon was fraudulent.
As federal support declines, economic pressure rises. Due to federal financing and competition from online gambling, tribes' economic branches which may be managed by non-Natives are under growing pressure to make money.
However, according to Galanda, a member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in northern California, the economic opportunities offered to tribes don't necessarily reflect their ideals.
The Prairie Band Potawatomi has a variety of companies that offer general contracting, interior design, and health care management employment.
KPB Services LLC, the tribal offshoot that ICE employed, was founded in Holton, Kansas, and isn't mentioned on the tribe's website. Although it hasn't yet completed any work for the federal government, it previously qualified with dozens of other businesses to offer logistical support to the U.S. Navy.
According to a one-sentence summary of the work in the federal government's real-time contracting database, the ICE contract was first granted in October for $19 million for nonspecific "due diligence and concept designs" for processing and detention facilities across the United States. A month later, it was changed to raise the payout cap to $29.9 million. Federal contracting regulations need extra explanation for sole-source contracts above $30 million.
Attorney Joshua Schnell, who specializes in federal procurement law, said the deal raises a variety of issues and appears to contradict the Trump administration's declared objective of eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.
“The public’s trust in the federal procurement system depends on transparency and competition,”
said Schnell.
“Although there is a role within this system for multimillion dollar sole-source contracts, these contracts are an exception to statutory competition requirements, and taxpayers are entitled to know how the government is spending their money.”
The Tribal Council's knowledge of the deal is unknown. The AP repeatedly asked a Tribal Council representative for information, including who was fired, but they did not reply.
According to the website for the one-time consulting firm Burton Woodward Partners LLC, Ernest C. Woodward Jr., a retired U.S. military officer with degrees in engineering and business and a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, registered KPB.
According to the website, Woodward is a seasoned businessman who advises tribes on mergers and acquisitions, obtaining funding, and securing federal contracts. After failing to submit an annual report, the consulting firm was delisted from the Sarasota, Florida office park where it had been registered in 2017.
In a 2017 press release, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation stated that Woodward's company provided advice on the purchase of Mill Creek LLC, another government contractor that specialized in providing office furniture and medical equipment to the military and federal buildings.
Additionally, Woodward is described as the chief operating officer of Prairie Band Construction Inc.'s September-registered Florida branch.
There were no successful attempts to find Woodward. Burton Woodward Partners' phone line was disconnected, and he did not reply to an email sent to Chinkapin Partners LLC, a Virginia-based consulting firm with which he is associated.
Carole Cadue-Blackwood, an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas with Prairie Band Potawatomi ancestry, hopes the contract expires. She works for a Native American social service organization and has participated in the opposition to the establishment of an ICE detention facility in Leavenworth, Kansas.
“I’m in just utter disbelief that this has happened,"
she said.
What reasons did tribal leaders give for taking the contract?
Prairie Band LLC leaders, previous to their blasting, defended accepting the $29.9 million ICE contract as a standard business decision to support profitable development for the lineage. They emphasized that the work involved only design services for detention installations, not operations, and complied with civil procurement processes amid critical government needs.
Company chairman Don Keskey stated the deal was vetted through internal channels and aimed to induce profit for ethnical services like healthcare and education, without original discussion of the full ethnical council. No moral or policy expostulations were raised at the time of signing in October 2025.
Ethical Chairman Joseph' Zeke' Rupnick later cited misalignment with autonomous values and literal trauma, leading to the December 9 discharges, but original leaders saw it as a politically profitable occasion.