It is hard to imagine being a Native American and being detained by Donald Trump’s ICE agents in Minneapolis – it doesn’t get more native than that.
The ICE agents are seeking out so-called “illegal aliens” in cities across the US for President Donald Trump and, if Minneapolis is not already in the wars after the shooting of Renee Nicole Good, a white American citizen, the Minnesota city is now seeing original tribal people from the region being thrown into ICE detainment.
This next controversial story from Minneapolis sees four members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe being detained by ICE agents at a homeless encampment last week.
The president of Oglala Sioux Tribe in South Dakota on Tuesday called for the immediate release of the four tribal members. However, President Frank Star Comes Out said in a statement released with a memorandum on Friday sent to federal immigration authorities that the tribe members were transferred to an ICE facility at Fort Snelling.
“The Oglala Sioux Tribe’s memorandum makes clear that ‘tribal citizens are not aliens’ and are ‘categorically outside immigration jurisdiction,’” Star Comes Out said. “Enrolled tribal members are citizens of the United States by statute and citizens of the Oglala Sioux Nation by treaty.”
However, as noted by Salon, details of the situation that led to the four tribal member’s detention were unclear.
In the memorandum addressed to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Star Comes Out explained that then the tribal nation reached out to the agency, it was only given the first names of the three men and that Homeland Security refused to release any more information, unless the tribe “entered into an immigration agreement with ICE.”
Meanwhile, Star Comes Out posted on his Facebook page that the four detained tribal members were currently experiencing homelessness and had been living under a bridge in Minneapolis. Since then, one of the men has been released from detention.
Star Comes Out demanded information on the status of the three men still in detention, the release of all tribal citizens in ICE custody and a meeting between the Oglala Sioux Tribe and the government.
🧵 Oglala Sioux Tribe Issues Treaty-Based Demand for Immediate Federal Action
Following ICE Detention of Tribal Citizens
“This is not a misunderstanding or an enforcement discretion issue,” President Star Comes Out stated. “This is a treaty violation. Treaties pic.twitter.com/AcMa9jsLzx
— Frances *Deadly SoverAuntie* Danger (@FrancesMFDanger) January 14, 2026
According to Nick Estes, an associate professor in American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota, said Fort Snelling has a troubling history for indigenous people. Dakota people were held prisoner there in the Dakota War of 1862, an armed conflict between the US and Native Americans. Estes himself is a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe.
“It has this really notorious anti-Indigenous, specifically anti-Dakota, history,” Estes said. “It’s kind of like a continuation on the monopoly of violence from the military outpost to the ICE facility.”
Meanwhile, this isn’t the first time in recent months that tribal members have been detained by ICE agents. In 2025, elected leaders in the Navajo Nation said tribe citizens in New Mexico and Arizona were reportedly stopped and detained by ICE offices.
Moreover, in November, one member of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Arizona was arrested in Iowa and was scheduled to be deported as an illegal alien before the error was caught and she was released.
But that’s not all, as that same month, Elaine Miles of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, and an actress famous for her roles in “Northern Exposure” and “The Last of Us,” said she was stopped by ICE officers in Washington state who told her that her tribal ID looked fake.
With all that is now happening, indigenous rights groups and the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians have set up places in Minneapolis for tribal members to apply for tribal ID cards, in case they are approached by ICE and needed to provide identification.
