Prairie Band Potawatomi picks criminals over law & order in ICE contract dust up

Tribal Chairman Joseph Rupnick addresses the firing of Prairie Band LLC staff over the ICE contract./Youtube capture

The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation has picked the wrong side of law and order.

The tribe made headlines last week after abruptly firing senior officials at Prairie Band LLC for securing a nearly $30 million federal contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to design detention facilities in the Sunflower State, then followed up this week with apparent plans to cancel the contract altogether.

It’s unclear exactly why – the tribe didn’t respond to follow-up questions from the Kansas Informer after Tribal Chairman Joseph Rupnick posted a video late last week saying “we must ask ourselves why we would ever participate in something that mirrors the harm and trauma once done to our people.”

What a faulty, ridiculous premise and a lame excuse for supporting criminals.

Within hours of the deal becoming public, the tribe announced on Facebook that the contract “does not align with our values,” and promptly removed the officials responsible. In the same breath, the tribe acknowledged the controversy had caused “anger, confusion and disappointment.”

So it would appear there’s really no question at all. Prairie Band leaders are rejecting the enforcement of duly enacted federal law — and punishing their own for upholding it — in order to signal solidarity with illegal immigration and those who break U.S. law. MS13 gang members; thieves; drug smugglers; human traffickers; rapists; they’re the new friends of the Prairie Band.

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Prairie Band LLC President Jacob Wamego defended the contract before he was ousted, noting that the majority of the company’s business comes from federal agreements. In other words, the tribe had no moral qualms about federal dollars until the “wrong” federal agency was involved.

Nor presumably does the tribe quibble with the $4.7 billion U.S. taxpayers pony up each year through the U.S. Department of Interior for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to fund the nation’s immense reservation system. Education, public safety, social services, infrastructure, trust management – all provided by tax paying American workers who probably would rather not be victimized by illegal aliens.

This was not a project to target any individual. It was not a deportation order. It wasn’t even operating a detention facility. It was simply helping with design work. Yet the response from tribal leadership suggests even participating in lawful federal processes is unacceptable if those processes involve enforcing immigration laws.

If that’s the new standard, will the tribe also reject federal highway funds because Border Patrol drives on those roads? Will it decline federal grants that come from agencies that support immigration enforcement? Will it return past contracts with the Department of Justice or Homeland Security? The logic collapses immediately.

The United States has a clear legal framework for immigration. Whether one agrees with President Trump’s campaign focus on removing those without legal status is beside the point. Congress writes the laws. Federal agencies must enforce them. There is nothing “value-based” about refusing to acknowledge the legality of those obligations.

Yet Prairie Band leadership appears more concerned with aligning with “woke” national narratives than recognizing the role detention capacity plays in enforcing the border. Maybe they believe the border’s just not that important?

If ICE cannot secure enough facilities to house detainees, then the practical result is simple:
People ordered to be removed under federal law will instead be released into the interior of the United States. Refusing to help design lawful detention space doesn’t advance humanitarian outcomes and it bears no resemblance to the war refugee history of native tribe relocation — it simply encourages more unlawful entry and undermines the credibility of the system.

The most troubling aspect is that Prairie Band leaders chose to fire officials who acted responsibly within the bounds of federal law and within the normal scope of their duties. The message is unmistakable: Follow the law; support a law enforcemnt mission, and you may lose your job if political winds shift.

That should concern not just tribal members, but any taxpayer who expects government partners — tribal, state, or federal — to act dependably.

Prairie Band leaders say the ICE contract “does not align with our values.” But what values are those? Are they values that reject enforcing democratically enacted laws? Are they values that punish employees for participating in lawful government functions? Are they values that prioritize political symbolism over public safety and national security?

If tribal leadership wants to elevate its own internal ideology over federal obligations, that is its sovereign right. But Kansans and Americans deserve honesty about what that stance truly supports. And whether intentionally or not, the firing of these officials sends a clear message:

It is not ICE, not federal law, and not public safety that Prairie Band leadership chose to support — but rather the growing movement that treats illegal immigration as acceptable and lawful enforcement as something shameful.

In a moment when the nation’s immigration system is strained to its limits, decisions like these do not strengthen America. They weaken it — and they undermine the rule of law that every community, tribal or otherwise, ultimately depends on.