Oglala Sioux Tribe Rejects ICE Conditions for Information on Detained Members

Leaders of the Oglala Sioux Tribe are demanding the immediate release of tribal citizens held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and are pushing back on federal conditions for information about their whereabouts...

Comes Out said the tribe sought detailed information from federal authorities about the detainees’ identities and legal status, but was provided only first names and was told additional information would be released only if the tribe agreed to enter into a formal “immigration agreement” with ICE. Tribe officials said they have no intention of signing such an agreement.

ICE Jails Oglala Sioux Members at Fort Snelling, Site of 19th-Century Concentration Camp

Among nonimmigrants who’ve been swept up by ICE’s campaign of racial profiling are four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, three of whom remain jailed at an ICE facility at Fort Snelling south of the Twin Cities. It’s the same site where, in 1862, U.S. forces imprisoned about 1,700 Indigenous men, women, children and elders following the U.S.-Dakota War, where many died of torture, starvation and disease; survivors were exiled to reservations in what’s now South Dakota.

ICE detaining Native American tribal citizens at concentration camp

"The irony is not lost on us," said Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out. "Lakota citizens… at Fort Snelling — a site forever tied to the Dakota 38+2." He's referring to the 38 Dakota men executed in the largest mass hanging in U.S. history, plus two more killed later.