Commentary: The Word “Illegal” Is a Weapon. Minneapolis Proves It.
By Troy Littledeer | @candyminksprings
History is not a ghost. It is a neighbor. It lives in the 38 tribal nations headquartered here in Oklahoma, and in the ancestral homelands of the 574 sovereign nations across Indian Country. It lives in the treaties the U.S. Constitution calls the supreme law of the land.
On Sunday, Feb. 1, 2026, history walked onto the Grammy stage. Accepting Song of the Year for “Wildflower” at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, singer Billie Eilish wore an “ICE Out” pin and said: “No one is illegal on stolen land.”
She also said: “Fuck ICE.” The CBS telecast bleeped it. The crowd heard it.
The backlash was fast. On Tuesday, Feb. 3, Sen. Ted Cruz hijacked a Senate antitrust hearing — convened to examine the Netflix-Warner Bros. merger — to ask Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos whether the hearing room was “stolen land.” Sarandos said he had no idea of the history of the land they were sitting on. Cruz called it proof that “the entertainment world is deeply corrupt.” Critics went after Eilish’s $14 million mansion. The federal government had killed two people in Minneapolis the month before. Cruz did not mention them.
Eilish’s statement drew fire because it pointed at something the critics did not want examined: how the word “illegal” functions in federal enforcement — and who it reaches.
The Tongva Response
Critics called Eilish a hypocrite for living on Tongva land while denouncing its theft. The San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians Gabrieleno Tongva, speaking to Newsweek, said they understood her home sits on their ancestral territory and asked that future discussions explicitly name the tribe so the public understands the specific history of that land. That is not a condemnation. It is a request for specificity.
What critics did not mention: the Tongva are not federally recognized. The acknowledgment process constrains what groups seeking recognition can say publicly without jeopardizing their case. The silence is structural, not moral.
Recognition as Currency
On Dec. 18, 2025, President Donald Trump signed the $900 billion National Defense Authorization Act into law. Attached to it: the Lumbee Fairness Act, granting federal recognition to the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina — bypassing the standard evidentiary review administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Federal Acknowledgment.
Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Principal Chief Michell Hicks said a defense bill was not the appropriate vehicle for recognition. “A national defense bill is not the appropriate place to consider federal recognition,” Hicks wrote, “particularly for a group that has not met the historical and legal standards required of sovereign tribal nations.” He warned that once recognition is granted without evidentiary review, the standing of all federally acknowledged tribal nations becomes vulnerable to political shifts rather than remaining anchored in history and law.
He is right, and the stakes reach beyond North Carolina. Every tribal nation in this country — including the 38 headquartered in Oklahoma — earned recognition through documented history, treaty relationship, and continuous governance. When Congress grants recognition through a must-pass spending bill in exchange for votes in a battleground state, it redefines what recognition means. If it can be given that way, it can be taken that way.
Our status as Indigenous people — whether we are Cherokee Nation citizens, United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians members, EBCI citizens, or citizens of any of the 574 sovereign nations — is grounded in treaties and documented history. When recognition becomes a political trade, those treaties mean less. Our sovereignty stops being an inherent right and becomes a government franchise.
Minneapolis
In January 2026, federal agents killed two people during Operation Metro Surge — the Department of Homeland Security’s own description of its largest immigration enforcement operation in history.
On Jan. 7, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed Renée Nicole Good, 37, a U.S. citizen, on Portland Avenue in Minneapolis. She was in her car. Ross fired three times. Federal officials said she tried to run him over. Bystander video, reviewed by Reuters, the BBC, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press, told a different story.
On Jan. 24, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti, 37, a VA intensive care nurse, on Nicollet Avenue in south Minneapolis. He was filming agents with his phone. He was pepper-sprayed, surrounded by at least six officers, and forced to the ground. An officer removed Pretti’s legally holstered firearm. Then came the shots — as many as 10, according to witnesses. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said: “I’ve seen the videos from several angles, and it’s sickening.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, alongside the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, filed a federal lawsuit against DHS alleging violations of the First and Tenth Amendments and the Administrative Procedure Act. On Jan. 28, U.S. Chief District Judge Patrick Schiltz found that ICE had violated at least 96 court orders in Minnesota since Jan. 1, 2026.
During the same operation, four Oglala Sioux tribal citizens — enrolled members of a federally recognized nation, U.S. citizens by statute since the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 — were detained at a homeless encampment in south Minneapolis near the Little Earth housing complex and transferred to an ICE facility at Fort Snelling. That site held Dakota prisoners during the Dakota War of 1862.
Oglala Sioux Tribe President Frank Star Comes Out sent a memorandum to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding their release. “Tribal citizens are not aliens,” he wrote. “They are categorically outside immigration jurisdiction.” He called the detentions “a treaty violation. Treaties are not optional. Sovereignty is not conditional. Our citizens are not negotiable.”
Federal officials told the tribe that to receive information about the detainees, it would need to enter into an immigration enforcement agreement with ICE. The tribe refused. Star Comes Out subsequently said the tribe was working to verify the full circumstances of the detentions. DHS denied requesting any agreement. One detainee was released. Three remained at Fort Snelling.
Oklahoma. South Dakota. Everywhere.
In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt has pushed a “one-rule” jurisdictional framework. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. has said that position conflicts with the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, which affirmed reservation boundaries and tribal jurisdiction over major crimes in Indian Country. That ruling has not moved.
In South Dakota, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem oversees enforcement actions that tribal leaders have said cross treaty boundaries. The history between Noem and the Oglala Sioux predates her Cabinet appointment: when she was South Dakota’s governor, the tribe banned her from Pine Ridge Reservation.
State and federal officials are testing how far enforcement can reach into Indian Country — in Minneapolis, where two U.S. citizens are dead; in Oklahoma, where a governor wants to erase lines the Supreme Court drew; in South Dakota, where the Secretary of Homeland Security once had to be told she was not welcome on sovereign land.
The Structure Behind the Statement
Billie Eilish is not a sovereignty scholar. She does not need to be. What she said on Feb. 1, 2026, was accurate: this land was taken, and the people who have lived here since the beginning have governments, treaties, and rights that predate the Constitution of the United States.
The critics focused on her mansion. They should have been looking at Fort Snelling.
Our tribes are not social clubs. We are governments. We have authority older than the nation now testing its limits against us. When federal agents detain enrolled tribal citizens in a city, hold them at a historic prisoner camp, and demand that a sovereign government sign an enforcement agreement to find out their names — that is not immigration law. That is a pressure test.
The treaties did not move. We didn’t move. Power will.
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author.
Troy Littledeer is a member of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians and an award-winning journalist and photographer. He is the founder of Candy Mink Springs Media LLC and its publications, including Giduwa Cherokee News and Kituwah Press. His reporting focuses on tribal sovereignty, federal Indian law, and community accountability in Adair County and Indian Country. He is a lifetime member of the Indigenous Journalists Association and recipient of the 2025 Tim Giago Free Press Award. He lives in Adair County, Oklahoma.
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