Lummi Nation Chair Anthony Hillaire can’t help but find the irony in tribal members being followed or stopped by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

The tribe, located near Bellingham, has not heard of ICE agents being present on the reservation. But tribal leadership has heard reports of members driving nearby being followed by federal agents. At least one member, Hillaire said, was pulled over by an ICE agent, though they were not detained.

“It's almost comical that we have Immigration and Customs Enforcement on tribal members when we've been here since time immemorial,” said Hillaire, whose traditional name is Tse Sum Ten. “We're the first inhabitants of this place.”

Native Americans across the U.S. have reported being stopped by ICE officers, questioned over their citizenship and in some cases arrested by federal agents. Amid a confluence of fear, confusion and outrage, Pacific Northwest tribal governments are strategizing on how to protect their members, issuing guidance for interacting with ICE and establishing policies that further assert their right to self-determination. The powers of treaties and tribal sovereignty — forged over generations on matters such as fishing and gaming — are being tested by the Trump administration’s expansive immigration enforcement effort in an unprecedented way.

It's really new for us to have to face these problems and address these questions for Indian country," said Malia Gesuale, staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund.

Northwest tribal leaders have been closely monitoring immigration enforcement activity for months. But concerns ratcheted up in November, when Indigenous actor Elaine Miles said she was stopped by an ICE officer in Redmond who said her tribal ID looked “fake.” Miles, an enrolled citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, said her son and uncle were detained by ICE agents who initially did not accept their tribal IDs before they were eventually let go.

Since President Donald Trump returned to office, dozens of U.S. citizens have reported being arrested and detained by ICE agents, which civil rights advocates have criticized as racial profiling and excessive policing. Several tribes, including the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, the Red Lake Nation and the Navajo Nation, have reported that their enrolled citizens have been detained by immigration officials.

The Native American Rights Fund, a national nonprofit law firm based in Boulder, Colo., has seen at least 10 instances of tribal members being stopped or detained by immigration enforcement agents, Gesuale said.

“It's, in our estimation, a wild undercount of how many times tribal citizens are unjustly needing to interact with ICE,” she said.

'Calm the fear'

The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians — which represents 57 tribes in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, northern California, southeastern Alaska and western Montana — this month passed a resolution demanding the Department of Homeland Security respect tribal sovereignty, notify tribes before entering reservations and acknowledge tribal ID cards as valid forms of identification.

That resolution could be a model for Native leaders to pass their own tribe-specific policies, said Gabe Galanda, a Seattle-based Indigenous rights lawyer.

“It's incumbent upon tribal nations to step forward and help calm the hysteria and calm the fear through good governance and good information and good protocols,” Galanda said.

Some tribes in Washington have already taken action. The Lummi Nation plans to put up signage outside their reservation reiterating their jurisdiction over the lands, Hillaire said. Tribal officials are also working to establish enhanced tribal identification cards that can be used to travel to Canada or Mexico.

The Lummi Nation also plans to create a hotline members can call to ask questions, seek resources and potentially connect with tribal leadership if they encounter ICE officers or fear they are being followed, Hillaire said.

Tribal nations elsewhere in the U.S. are taking more direct steps against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. At least two tribes have canceled contracts with ICE related to designing facilities and providing inspection services for existing structures. One tribe in South Dakota formally barred ICE from their reservations, a move some say is necessary as Indigenous Americans say they are being racially profiled by immigration officials.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has rejected criticism of racial profiling and unlawful behavior by immigration officials. In a letter to tribal leaders this month, Noem said that to date, no ICE operations have occurred on tribal lands.

"ICE does not target, and will not target, Native Americans or any U.S. citizens based on appearance, ethnicity, or community affiliation," she wrote in the letter, obtained by ICT, a nonprofit news outlet.

Still, the reports from Native communities are numerous and troubling, said Nazune Menka, an assistant professor of law and faculty director of the Northwest Center for Indigenous Law at Seattle University.

The racialization of tribal citizens is not new, she said, but it is particularly disturbing when combined with rejection of a tribal member's ID card. Tribal IDs are recognized by the federal government as a valid form of identification that can be used at TSA checkpoints for domestic travel.

Elders and grandparents have shared stories of complicated conversations around citizenship and tribal identity, she said. Until the passage of the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Native Americans were not considered U.S. citizens, and it would be decades before all were fully granted the right to vote.

“My ancestors in Alaska really fought hard to be able to have the right to vote in the state of Alaska, and then, of course, within the federal polity as well,” said Menka, a descendant of Koyukon Athabascan and Lumbee peoples. “So knowing that history ... it feels like we’re in a cycle of regression.”

The Trump administration cited an 1884 legal case denying citizenship to Native Americans as part of its effort to end birthright citizenship. That caused some tribal citizens to think, for the first time, “Is there some conceivable way I don't belong or am otherwise not a rightful American citizen?” Galanda said.

While he hopes no tribal member is worried about an imminent loss of their rights as U.S. citizens, “It's the whole totality of circumstances that is just causing, at minimum, questions that are unhealthy, but even worse, real deep anxieties and fears within tribal communities,” he said.

Tribal sovereignty 'is still the law'

The law is clear: The federal government has a legal obligation and fiduciary responsibility to protect tribal treaty rights, said Gesuale, the attorney with the Native American Rights Fund.

But when it comes specifically to the powers and limits of federal agencies to run ICE operations on tribal lands, the issue is thorny, she said, complicated by the Trump administration's circumvention of federal policies and eschewal of historical enforcement standards.

It's not uncommon for federal agents to enter reservations for law enforcement. Federal officials, such as those with the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security Investigations, have conducted raids targeting human trafficking or drug operations taking advantage of remote tribal lands.

But under Biden-era federal policy guidelines still in effect, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, is obligated to consult with tribal nations before engaging in policies, programs or operations that may impact its sovereign rights, Gesuale said.

The Native American Rights Fund is recommending that tribes proactively request the federal department to consult with their government, a primary proposal in the resolution passed by the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians and in a similar one passed by the National Congress of American Indians.

“We've already seen ICE blatantly violate the treaty and constitutional and civil rights of Native Americans through unlawful detentions, but ICE's obligation to consult with tribal nations is still the law,” Gesuale said.

Some tribes already have explicit treaty language barring federal officers from accessing tribal properties without prior permission, Galanda said. Under the Yakama Treaty of 1855, Galanda said all federal agencies other than the Indian Department (today’s Bureau of Indian Affairs) need permission from the Yakama Nation before entering the reservation.

Tribal nations at minimum have the same rights as any private land owner to reserve private areas, Gesuale said. Tribal governments should clearly mark areas as nonpublic spaces where ICE agents would need a judicial warrant to issue an arrest, she said, and prepare tribal government staff to enforce those designations.

In some tribal communities, that preparation will likely happen quietly behind the scenes, if at all. Some tribal councils, weighing the political ramifications of speaking out, have remained publicly silent despite privately despising current immigration tactics. Numerous tribal leaders in Washington declined interview requests for this story.

The fear of punishment from the Trump administration, either in the cancellation of other government contracts or federal funding, is a real concern, Galanda said, and massive cuts to health and social services would be devastating for members.

Trump vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have allowed the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida to expand its tribal lands. Explaining his decision, Trump appeared to be retaliating against the tribe for joining environmental groups in a federal lawsuit over “Alligator Alcatraz,” a detention center built last year in the Everglades.

'Unite and stand up'

For many Native Americans, the federal government’s tactics of detaining and deporting immigrants — many of whom are Latino — recalls a long history of violent displacement, forced family separations and cultural erasure, Menka said. In parts of Washington, generations of Native Americans and Latinos have worked together on farms or have married and raised families together, Galanda said.

Tribal members who haven’t been personally targeted by immigration enforcement say they’ve been deeply hurt and haunted by the crackdown.

Mackenzie Parks, an enrolled member of the Tulalip Tribes, runs the Hidden Gems Weekend Market, a flea market and swap meet on the reservation that has grown into a close-knit community — mothers cooking before sunrise, fathers packing and unloading goods, teenagers helping their parents run booths.

The weekend market, which runs from April to September, typically has about 200 vendors and 1,500 to 3,000 attendees. Those figures were sliced in half starting in April 2025, as fears of ICE activity rocked vendors and customers, a majority of whom are Latino, Parks said.

“All of my employees who work with me at the market, all of us have had conversations with vendors and customers telling us that they are too afraid to come to the market,” she said.

“It's sad, because I know that they are scared. I don't blame them. What's happening right now in America is really messed up," she said. "Nothing justifies the way they’re being treated."

Only time will tell how many vendors and customers will return when the market reopens in April, she said.

For Mackenzie Parks’ father Les Parks, a former board member of the Tulalip Tribes, the time to act is now.

Tribal governments across the country have a moral obligation to "unite and stand up against ICE and the federal government, despite what they could do," he said.

He said he plans to support a resolution coming before the tribe during its annual General Council meeting in March focused on immigration enforcement, and expects many tribal members will back it as well.

“We all have to stand up and protest and be loud about it," Les Parks said. Indians, in my mind, are the only real owners of this land, and everybody else that is here are immigrants.”

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