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A kansas The Tribe said it is abandoning a nearly $30 million federal contract to produce preliminary designs for immigrant detention centers after facing a wave of criticism online.
Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation’s announcement Wednesday night came just a week after it fired economic development leaders who had to deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
with some native Americans After being caught and detained in recent ICE raids, the deal was ridiculed online as “disgusting” and “cruel.” Many people in Indian country also raised the question that a tribe whose own ancestors were uprooted two centuries ago great Lakes People living in the area and on reservations south of Topeka can participate. trump The administration’s mass deportation efforts.
Tribal Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnik agreed to the historic issues in a video address last week, calling the reservation “the government’s first attempt at detention centers.” In an update on Wednesday, he announced that he was “pleased to share that our nation has successfully exited all third-party interests associated with ICE.”
The Prairie Band Potawatomi have a variety of businesses that provide health care management staffing, general contracting, and even interior design. And Rupnik said in his latest address that tribal officials plan to meet in January to ensure “that economic interests do not conflict with our values in the future.”
A tribal branch hired by ICE — KPB Services LLC — was founded in April in Holton, Kansas, by Ernest C. Woodward Jr., a former Navy officer who markets himself as the “go-to” consultant for tribes and affiliated companies that want to get federal contracts.
The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation said in 2017 that Woodward’s firm advised it on its acquisition of another government contractor, Mill Creek LLC, which specializes in furnishing federal buildings and the military with office furniture and medical equipment.
Woodward is also listed as its chief operating officer. Florida Branch of Prairie Band Construction Inc., which was registered in September.
Efforts to locate Woodward were unsuccessful. A KPB spokesperson said Woodward is no longer with the LLC but declined to say whether he had been terminated. Woodward did not respond to an email sent to another consulting firm affiliated with Virginia-based Chinkapin Partners LLC.
A spokesperson for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation said the tribe has separated from KPB. While that company still holds the contract, “Prairie Band no longer has a stake,” the spokesperson said.
The spokeswoman said Woodward is no longer with the tribe’s limited liability corporation, but declined to say whether he had been terminated.
The ICE contract was initially awarded in October for $19 million for unspecified “due diligence and concept design” for processing centers and detention centers across the U.S., according to a one-sentence description of the work on the federal government’s real-time contract database. This was amended a month later to increase the payment limit to $29.9 million.
Single-source contracts worth more than $30 million require additional justification under federal contracting rules.
Tribal leaders and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have not answered detailed questions about why the company was selected for such a large contract without competing for the work, as is normally required in federal contracts. It is also unclear what the Tribal Council knew about the contract.
“The internal auditing process is really just beginning,” the tribal spokesperson said.
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Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas, and Goodman reported from Miami.