The Kansas tribe ended a nearly $30 million settlement with ICE

A Kansas tribe said it is walking away from a nearly $30 million federal contract to come up with preliminary designs for immigrant detention centers after facing a wave of criticism online.

The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation’s announcement came Wednesday night after economic development leaders fired a deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

After some Native Americans were rounded up and detained in recent ICE raids, the deal was derided online as “disgusting” and “cruel.” Many in Indian Country also questioned how a tribe whose ancestors were uprooted from the Great Lakes region two centuries ago and settled on a reservation south of Topeka could participate in the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.

Tribal Chairman Joseph “JK” Rupnick nodded to the historic issues in a video address last week that called 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 eliminated all third-party related interests associated with ICE.”

Prairie Band Potawatomi has a range of businesses that also provide healthcare management staffing, general contracting and interior design. And Rupnik said in a recent address that tribal officials plan to meet in January to discuss how to ensure that “economic interests do not come into conflict with our values ​​in the future.”

A tribal offshoot hired by ICE – KPB Services LLC – in April in Holton, Kansas, Ernest C. was founded by Woodward Jr., a former Navy officer who markets himself as the “go-to” consultant for tribes and affiliated companies seeking to land federal contracts.

The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation said in 2017 that Woodward’s firm advised it to acquire another government contractor, Mill Creek LLC, which specializes in outfitting federal buildings and the military with office furniture and medical equipment.

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

Attempts to locate Woodward were unsuccessful. A KPB spokeswoman said Woodward is no longer with the LLC but declined to say whether he had been fired. Woodward did not respond to an email sent to another consulting firm affiliated with Virginia-based Chinkapin Partners LLC.

A spokesman for the Potawatomi Nation, a prairie band, said the tribe has separated from the KPB. While that company still has a 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 she declined to say whether he had been fired.

An ICE contract was initially awarded for $19 million in October for unspecified “due diligence and concept designs” for processing centers and detention centers across the United States, according to a one-sentence job description in the federal government’s real-time contract database. It was revised a month later to raise the payment limit to $29.9 million.

Sole source contracts above $30 million require additional justification under federal contracting regulations.

Tribal leaders and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security have not answered detailed questions about why the firm was chosen for such a large contract without competing for the work, which is normally required in federal contracts. It is also unclear what the tribal council knew about the deal.

“That process of internal audit has really begun,” the tribal spokesman said.

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Hollingsworth Mission, Kansas, and Goodman reported from Miami.