CRST sues Trump

EAGLE BUTTE – The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, headquartered here, filed suit June 23 against U.S. President Donald Trump and a raft of federal officials to stop them from allegedly colluding in interference with the exercise of sovereign rights to operate Indian reservation highway checkpoints for Covid-19 pandemic safety.

The filing took place the day after Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Chair Harold Frazier received a letter from Washington vowing a federal takeover of the tribe’s law enforcement office “in 24 hours,” if the tribe didn’t restructure its police department according to specifications.

The letter was from Charles Addington, whose title is U.S. Interior Department Bureau of Indian Affairs Director of the Office of Justice Services.

Nicole Ducheneaux, attorney for the tribe in the case, responded, “The tribe’s law enforcement funding was pulled in middle of the coronavirus pandemic, leaving an already vulnerable population to deal with yet another health and safety crisis.”

Leading up to this, a conflict had been brewing for months over the checkpoints, which are fiercely defended by tribal members and adamantly opposed by state as well as federal officials.

“Astonishingly, the tribe’s efforts to protects its people with health safety checkpoints became a political flashpoint in the state of South Dakota, inspiring Gov. Kristi Noem to issue a series of ultimata to the tribe,” the lawsuit states.

“When the tribe did not capitulate to Governor Noem’s demands, she escalated her offensive to the White House, seeking federal government assistance in her quest to shut down the tribe’s health safety checkpoints,” it documents.

Noem sent a letter to Trump on May 20 requesting that he unleash federal authority to remove the roadside health inspection stations.

“Since Governor Noem’s White House plea, all named defendants have worked in concert, abusing the power of the federal government, to coerce the tribe to dismantle its comprehensive Covid-19 response plan, including shutting down the tribe’s health safety checkpoints,” the suit says.

When that did not work, highly-placed Trump Administration officials finally threatened to punish the tribe by taking over its Public Law 93-638 contract with the federal government, – “imperiling tribal public safety as well as public health,” according to the lawsuit.

P.L. 93-638 contacts guarantee tribes can operate their own services, such as law enforcement, rather than relying on the U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs for policing or other provisions.

The tribe put into effect a comprehensive Covid-19 response plan on April 2, setting up reservation roadside checkpoints to monitor and track individuals entering tribal territory from hotspots elsewhere.

Tribal Chair Harold Frazier highlighted his Administration’s choice to be “an island of safety in a sea of uncertainty and death,” when the tribe’s rate of infection remained significantly below the rate for South Dakota at large, with no Covid-19 deaths to date.

“The tribe’s Covid-19 response planning is essential to protect the tribal population, which suffers heightened vulnerability to the disease because of endemic poverty and health disparities,” the lawsuit states. The poorest county in the nation lies within reservation boundaries.

The tribal government sees its response as “especially critical in light of the state’s failure to meaningfully protect its residents, including the tribal population,” it says.

It adds that the screening system has “been so successful that the tribe has had only six reported cases of Covid-19 on its reservation, and each of those cases can be traced to entries identified through the tribe’s health safety checkpoint informational system,” the filing notes. No community spread has occurred.

Meanwhile, at the time of filing, South Dakota — one of five states that didn’t issue a shelter-in-place mandate — had 6,353 confirmed cases and 83 deaths outside the boundaries of the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation.

“The tribe’s health safety checkpoints are a lawful exercise of our sovereign authority and intended to protect our people from sickness and death. And it’s working,” said Ducheneaux, a Cheyenne River Sioux tribal member and partner at Big Fire Law & Policy Group.

Federal officials “have colluded to both coerce and punish the tribe for their checkpoints,” Ducheneaux said. “When the tribe informed White House and agency officials that they were not going to end their health checkpoints, the tribe’s law enforcement funding was pulled,” she said.

The filing details a series of bureaucratic closed-door dealings and threats to the tribe over its pandemic program, traceable to the offices of the state governor and federal officials.

When Noem sent her letter to Trump requesting that he use federal authority to remove the tribe’s checkpoints, she released copies to the media, but the tribe didn’t receive one, according to the suit. What’s more, according to allegations:

On June 7, Assistant Interior Secretary for Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney told Frazier on the phone that the deputization of checkpoint monitors was a breach of compliance with the tribe’s P.L. 93-638 law enforcement contract.

On June 8, she informed the tribe in writing that the BIA would assume police duties on the reservation if the tribal government failed to “withdraw the deputations of those individuals who do not meet the standards required by federal regulation, as incorporated into the tribe’s law enforcement contract.”

On June 9, tribal staff told local BIA staff that checkpoint monitors are not P.L. 93-638 employees.

On June 11, Frazier responded in writing to Sweeney, clarifying that checkpoint monitors are not deputized as police officers and are not paid using the tribe’s P.L. 93-638 contract funding. He said the tribe would remove any patches and badges from the monitors to avoid confusion as to their status.

On June 12, Aberdeen District 1 Special Agent in Charge of Justice Services William McClure sent a follow-up letter to Frazier threatening specific monetary penalties and forcible dismantling of the tribe’s law enforcement program for continued failure to comply with corrective action demanded by the federal authorities.

Then, in a June 17 ice-breaking event, Sweeney praised Frazier and concurred in a telephone conference with him that they would work together to reach full compliance with deputization terms in the ongoing administration of the 93-638 contract for policing.

So the tribe was “very surprised” by Addington’s 24-hour edict “directly threatening immediate emergency” BIA seizure Cheyenne River Law Enforcement Services if the tribe did not “pull from service any member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribal police department lacking ‘a completed and adjudicated background check on file equivalent to a federal officer performing law enforcement duties’,” according to the suit.

The Native Sun News Today was not very surprised, however, because four members of our journalistic have been investigating BIA activities since 2019, and:

A highly placed source in the U.S. Capitol informed us on condition of anonymity that long before pandemic checkpoints, Addington and Sweeney were trying to move control of P.L. 93-638 contracts out of the BIA Office of Justice Services to be supervised directly by Interior.

If that happens, all 574 federally recognized tribes would no longer be assured their option to give preference in hiring to native citizens in tribal law enforcement and other contract services.

Addington, McLure, Sweeney, Trump and others are among all defendants in the suit who are charged with violating their trust duty to the tribe under the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty and with breaching related laws.

Sweeney is singled out for the decision to demand the checkpoints shut-down and she is fingered for threatening the takeover of law enforcement, considered in the suit to be “arbitrary and capricious.”

The actions are labelled “an abuse of discretion” that “outrageously threatens government retaliation in an effort to curtail the tribe’s jurisdiction and impede the tribe’s right to self-governance.”

Also named as defendants are: White House Chief of Staff Mark R. Meadows, White House Intergovernmental Affairs Director Douglas L. Hoelscherm, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Deborah L. Birx, Interior Secretary David L. Bernhardt, BIA Director David Lacounte, BIA Deputy Director James D. James, and BIA Great Plains Regional Director Tim Lapointe.

 

(Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com)

 

 

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