Category: News

MAYETTA, Kan. — The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, whose ancestors were uprooted by the U.S. from the Great Lakes region in the 1830s, are facing outrage from fellow Native Americans over plans to profit from another forced removal: President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

A newly established tribal business entity quietly signed a nearly $30 million federal contract in October to come up with an early design for immigrant detention centers across the U.S. Amid the backlash, the tribe says it’s trying to get out of it.

Tribal leaders and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security haven’t responded to detailed questions about why the firm was selected for such a big contract without having to compete for the work as federal contracting normally requires. A former naval officer — who markets himself as the “go-to” adviser for tribes and affiliated companies seeking to land federal contracts — established the affiliate, KPB Services LLC, in April.

The criticism has been so intense that the 4,500-member tribe said it fired the economic development leaders who brokered the deal.

“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.”

ICE deals with tribes generate scrutiny

Tribal Chairperson Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick promised “full transparency” about what he described as an “evolving situation.” In a video message to tribal members Friday, he said the tribe is talking with legal counsel about ways to end the contract.

He alluded to the time when federal agents forcibly removed hundreds of Prairie Band Potawatomi families from their homes and ultimately corralled them on a reservation 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.”

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way in September for federal agents to conduct sweeping immigration raids and use apparent ethnicity as a relevant factor for a stop. With some Native Americans being swept up and detained in recent raids, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s overtures to tribes and even longstanding deals are generating extra scrutiny.

An LLC owned by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians in Alabama also has a multimillion-dollar contract with ICE to provide financial and administrative services. Meanwhile, some shareholders of an Alaska Native corporation say their values don’t align with the corporation’s federal contracting division, Akima, to provide security at several ICE detention facilities.

“I’m shocked that there is any tribal nation that’s willing to assist the U.S. government in that,” said Brittany McKane, a 29-year-old Muscogee Nation citizen who attends the tribe’s college in Oklahoma.

Some tribal nations have advised their citizens to carry tribal IDs.

Last month, actor Elaine Miles (Northern Exposure) said she was stopped by ICE agents who alleged her ID from the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon was fake.

Economic pressure increases as federal funding decreases

The economic arms of tribes, which can be run by non-Natives, are under increasing pressure to generate revenue because of decreased federal funding, high inflation, and competition from online gambling, said Gabe Galanda, an Indigenous rights attorney based in Seattle.

But the economic opportunities presented to tribes don’t always align with their values, said Galanda, a member of the Round Valley Indian Tribes in northern California.

The Prairie Band Potawatomi has a range of businesses that provide healthcare management staffing, general contracting, and even interior design.

The tribal offshoot hired by ICE — KPB Services LLC — was established in Holton, Kan., and is not listed on the tribe’s website. It previously qualified along with dozens of other companies to provide logistical support to the U.S. Navy although, to date, it hasn’t performed any work for the federal government.

The ICE contract initially was awarded in October for $19 million for unspecified “due diligence and concept designs” for processing centers and detention centers throughout the U.S., according to a one-sentence description of the work on the federal government’s real time contracting database. It was modified a month later to increase the payout ceiling to $29.9 million. Sole-source contracts above $30 million require additional justification under federal contracting rules.

The contract raises a number of questions and seems to go against the Trump administration’s stated goal of cleaning up waste, fraud, and abuse, said attorney Joshua Schnell, who specializes in federal contracting law.

“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.”

Backlash swift as news about ICE contract spread

It’s unclear what the Tribal Council knew about the contract. A spokesperson for the Tribal Council did not respond to repeated requests from the AP for details, including who was terminated.

What is known is that KPB was registered by Ernest C. Woodward Jr., a retired U.S. naval officer with degrees in engineering and business who is a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, according to a website for his one-time consulting firm, Burton Woodward Partners LLC.

The website described Woodward as a serial entrepreneur and tribal adviser on mergers and acquisitions, accessing capital, and landing federal contracts. The consulting firm was registered to an office park in Sarasota, Fla., in 2017 but was delisted two years later after it failed to file an annual report.

The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in a 2017 news release said Woodward’s firm advised it on its acquisition of another government contractor, Mill Creek LLC, which specializes in outfitting federal buildings and the military with office furniture and medical equipment.

Woodward also is listed as the chief operating officer of the Florida branch of Prairie Band Construction Inc., which was registered in September.

Attempts to locate Woodward were unsuccessful. The phone number listed on Burton Woodward Partners was disconnected, and he did not respond to an email sent to another consulting firm he’s affiliated with, Virginia-based Chinkapin Partners LLC.

Carole Cadue-Blackwood, who has Prairie Band Potawatomi ancestry and is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe in Kansas, hopes the contract dies. She has been part of the fight against an ICE detention center opening in Leavenworth, Kan., and works for a social service agency for Native Americans.

“I’m in just utter disbelief that this has happened,” she said.

SURIN, Thailand — Fighting raged Saturday morning along the border of Thailand and Cambodia, even after U.S. President Donald Trump, acting as a mediator, declared that he had won agreement from both countries for a new ceasefire.

Thai officials said they did not agree to a ceasefire. Cambodia has not commented directly on Trump’s claim, but its defense ministry said Thai jets carried out airstrikes Saturday morning.

Thai Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow said Saturday that some of Trump’s remarks didn’t “reflect an accurate understanding of the situation.”

He said Trump’s characterization of a land mine explosion that wounded Thai soldiers as a “roadside accident” was inaccurate, and did not reflect Thailand’s position that it was a deliberate act of aggression.

Sihasak said that Trump’s willingness to credit what may be “information from sources that deliberately distorted the facts” instead of believing Thailand hurt the feelings of the Thai people “because we consider ourselves — we are proud, in fact — to be the oldest treaty ally of the United States in the region.”

The latest large-scale fighting was set off by a skirmish on Dec. 7 that wounded two Thai soldiers and derailed a ceasefire promoted by Trump that ended five days of earlier combat in July over longstanding territorial disputes.

The July ceasefire was brokered by Malaysia and pushed through by pressure from Trump, who threatened to withhold trade privileges unless Thailand and Cambodia agreed. It was formalized in more detail in October at a regional meeting in Malaysia that Trump attended.

Number of displaced tops half a million

More than two dozen people on both sides of the border have officially been reported killed in this past week’s fighting, while more than half a million have been displaced.

The Thai military acknowledged 15 of its troops died during the fighting and estimated earlier this week that there have been 165 fatalities among Cambodian soldiers. Cambodia has not announced military casualties, but has said at least 11 civilians have been killed and more than six dozen wounded.

Trump, after speaking to Thai Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, announced on Friday an agreement to restart the ceasefire.

“They have agreed to CEASE all shooting effective this evening, and go back to the original Peace Accord made with me, and them, with the help of the Great Prime Minister of Malaysia, Anwar Ibrahim,” Trump wrote in his Truth Social post.

Trump’s claim came after midnight in Bangkok. Thai Prime Minister Anutin had, after his call with Trump, said he had explained Thailand’s reasons for fighting and said peace would depend on Cambodia ceasing its attacks first.

The Thai foreign ministry later explicitly disputed Trump’s claim that a ceasefire had been reached. Anutin’s busy day on Friday included dissolving Parliament, so new elections could be held early next year.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, in comments posted early Saturday morning, also made no mention of a ceasefire.

Leaders held Friday night phone talks with Trump

Hun Manet said he held phone conversations on Friday night with Trump, and a night earlier with Malaysia’s Anwar, and thanked both “for their continuous efforts to achieve a long-lasting peace between Cambodia and Thailand.”

“Cambodia is ready to cooperate in any way that is needed,” Hun Manet wrote.

Anwar later posted on social media that he was urging the two sides to implement a ceasefire on Saturday night. Cambodia’s prime minister, also posting online, endorsed the initiative, which included having Malaysia and the United States help monitor it. However, Thai Prime Minister Anutin denied that his country was even in negotiations over the proposal.

Thailand has been carrying out airstrikes on what it says are strictly military targets, while Cambodia has been firing thousands of medium-range BM-21 rockets that have caused havoc but relatively few casualties.

BM-21 rocket launchers can fire up to 40 rockets at a time with a range of 19-25 miles. These rockets cannot be precisely targeted and have landed largely in areas from where most people have already been evacuated.

However, the Thai army announced Saturday that BM-21 rockets had hit a civilian area in Sisaket province, seriously injuring two civilians who had heard warning sirens and had been running toward a bunker for safety.

Thailand’s navy was also reported by both sides’ militaries to have joined the fighting on Saturday morning, with a warship in the Gulf of Thailand shelling Cambodia’s southwestern province of Koh Kong. Each side said the other opened fire first.

JERUSALEM — Israel on Saturday said it killed a top Hamas commander in Gaza after an explosive device detonated and wounded two soldiers in the territory’s south.

Hamas in a statement did not confirm the death of Raed Saad. It said a civilian vehicle had been struck outside Gaza City and asserted it was a violation of the ceasefire that took effect on Oct. 10.

Saad served as the Hamas official in charge of manufacturing and previously led the militant group’s operations division. The Israeli statement described him as one of the architects of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that sparked the war, and said that he had been “engaged in rebuilding the terrorist organization” in a violation of the ceasefire.

The Israeli strike west of Gaza City killed four people, according to an Associated Press journalist who saw their bodies arrive at Shifa Hospital. Another three were wounded, according to Al-Awda hospital.

Israel and Hamas have repeatedly accused each other of truce violations.

Israeli airstrikes and shootings in Gaza have killed at least 386 Palestinians since the ceasefire took hold, according to Palestinian health officials. Israel has said recent strikes are in retaliation for militant attacks against its soldiers, and that troops have fired on Palestinians who approached the Yellow Line between the Israeli-controlled majority of Gaza and the rest of the territory.

Israel has demanded that Palestinian militants return the remains of the final hostage, Ran Gvili, from Gaza and called it a condition of moving to the second and more complicated phase of the ceasefire. That lays out a vision for ending Hamas’ rule and seeing the rebuilding of a demilitarized Gaza under international supervision.

The initial Hamas-led 2023 attack on southern Israel killed around 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. Almost all hostages or their remains have been returned in ceasefires or other deals.

Israel’s two-year campaign in Gaza has killed more than 70,650 Palestinians, roughly half of them women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between militants and civilians in its count. The ministry, which operates under the Hamas-run government, is staffed by medical professionals and maintains detailed records viewed as generally reliable by the international community.

Much of Gaza has been destroyed and most of the population of over 2 million has been displaced. Humanitarian aid entry into the territory continues to be below the level set by ceasefire terms, and Palestinians who lost limbs in the war face a shortage of prosthetic limbs and long delays in medical evacuations.

DAMASCUS, Syria — President Donald Trump said Saturday that “there will be very serious retaliation” after two U.S. service members and one American civilian were killed in an attack in Syria that the United States blames on the Islamic State group.

“This was an ISIS attack against the U.S., and Syria, in a very dangerous part of Syria, that is not fully controlled by them,” he said in a social media post.

The American president told reporters at the White House that Syria’s president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, was “devastated by what happened” and stressed that Syria was fighting alongside U.S. troops. Trump, in his post, said al-Sharaa was “extremely angry and disturbed by this attack.”

The two service members killed were members of the Iowa National Guard, according to a person briefed on the situation who was granted anonymity because they did not have permission to speak publicly.

U.S. Central Command said three service members were also wounded in an ambush Saturday by a lone IS member in central Syria. Trump said the three “seem to be doing pretty well.” The U.S. military said the gunman was killed.

The attack on U.S. troops in Syria was the first with fatalities since the fall of President Bashar Assad a year ago.

“There will be very serious retaliation,” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

The Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said the civilian killed was a U.S. interpreter. Parnell said the attack targeted soldiers involved in the ongoing counterterrorism operations in the region and is under active investigation.

The shooting took place near historic Palmyra, according to the state-run SANA news agency, which earlier said two members of Syria’s security force and several U.S. service members had been wounded. The casualties were taken by helicopter to the al-Tanf garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security force.

Syria’s Interior Ministry spokesperson Nour al-Din al-Baba said a gunman linked to IS opened fire at the gate of a military post. He added that Syrian authorities are looking into whether the gunman was an IS member or only carried its extreme ideology. He denied reports that suggested that the attacker was a security member.

Later al-Baba clarified that the attacker was a member of the Internal Security force in the desert, adding that he “did not have any command post” within the forces nor was he a bodyguard for the force commander.

Al-Baba added in an interview with state TV that some 5,000 members have joined Internal Security forces in the desert and they are evaluated on a weekly basis. He added that three days ago, an evaluation was made of the attacker and it turned out that he might have extreme ideology. A decision was expected to be issued regarding him on Sunday but “the attack occurred on a Saturday which is a day off for state institutions.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth posted on X: “Let it be known, if you target Americans — anywhere in the world — you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.”

The U.S. has hundreds of troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting IS.

The U.S. had no diplomatic relations with Syria under Assad, but ties have warmed since the fall of the five-decade Assad family rule. Al-Sharaa made a historic visit to Washington last month where he held talks with Trump. It was the first White House visit by a Syrian head of state since the Middle Eastern country gained independence from France in 1946 and came after the U.S. lifted sanctions imposed on Syria during the Assads’ rule.

Al-Sharaa led the rebel forces that toppled Bashar Assad in December 2024 and was named the country’s interim leader in January. Al-Sharaa once had ties to al-Qaida and had a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head.

Last month, Syria joined the international coalition fighting against the IS as Damascus improves its relations with Western countries following the ouster of Assad when insurgents captured his seat of power in Damascus.

IS was defeated on the battlefield in Syria in 2019 but the group’s sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in the country. The United Nations says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.

U.S. troops, which have maintained a presence in different parts of Syria — including Al-Tanf garrison in the central province of Homs — to train other forces as part of a broad campaign against IS, have been targeted in the past. One of the deadliest attacks occurred in 2019 in the northern town of Manbij when a blast killed two U.S. service members and two American civilians as well as others from Syria while conducting a patrol.