Chambers USA Again Recognizes Galanda Broadman's Excellence in Native American Law

Galanda Broadman, PLLC, has once again been recognized among the best Native American Law firms in the country by Chambers USA.

Gabe Galanda was also again ranked among the nation’s best Native American Law practitioners.

The firm, with eight lawyers and offices in Seattle and Yakima, Washington and Bend, Oregon, represents Tribal governments, businesses, and citizens in critical litigation, business and regulatory matters, especially in matters of Treaty rights, sovereignty, taxation, and civil rights.

Galanda Broadman also represents Indigenous individuals in civil and human rights matters, especially in litigation against local, state, and federal police officers and jails for the loss of human life.

Galanda Broadman is honored to be ranked among the best Native American Law firms in the country and grateful to all of our Tribal and Indigenous clients for allowing us the opportunity to earn that recognition.

Wash. Supreme Court Issues Proclamation Honoring Tribal Sovereignty, Indigenous Humanity

On June 5, the entire Washington State Supreme Court issued a historic proclamation recognizing the sovereignty and humanity of the First Peoples of Washington State.

The letter addressed to “Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, Members of the Judiciary, and the Legal Community” is signed and issued by all nine Justices, in response to a 2024 ATNI Resolution titled, “Rectifying the Dehumanization of Indigenous People in State Legal Systems.”

ATNI’s Resolution called upon the Supreme Court “to issue a proclamation that urges action by those in the legal and judicial system to rectify the historical and continued dehumanization of Indigenous people in Washington state.”

The Supreme Court’s entire proclamation reads as follows:

Dear Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians, Members of the Judiciary, and the Legal Community:

We acknowledge that Washington State is on the traditional land of Tribal and Indigenous people. We honor their homelands and express gratitude to the descendants of the land and the land itself.

In October 2024, the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) called upon this court to issue a proclamation urging action by those in the legal and judicial system to rectify the historical and continued dehumanization of the Indigenous people in Washington State.

Today, we issue this letter in response. We acknowledge Washington’s history of injustice towards Tribal and Indigenous communities and commit to continue taking steps to rectify past harms. We recognize that these communities have been vocalizing injustices for centuries.

We urge judges, the legal community, and lawyers to actively confront and rectify the historical and ongoing dehumanization of Indigenous people in Washington through their work, decisions, and daily practices.

We recognize that the history of this state, including state courts, is intertwined with racism and violence inflicted upon Indigenous people. This adversarial relationship began even before Washington was a state; with treaties negotiated under duress and the execution of important Tribal leaders.

We also recognize that history is reflected in our cities, towns, and communities. Thurston County, specifically, named after Samuel Thurston, reflects a racist legacy tied to rhetoric and actions that harmed Indigenous people. These legacies are not abstract. Native communities continue to face great systemic injustices from land dispossession, trauma from forced separation and incarceration through U.S. Indian boarding schools, overrepresentation in the child welfare, juvenile and criminal systems, higher rates of poverty, higher rates of missing persons, higher rates of sexual violence against Indigenous women and girls, and a lack of resources in education, healthcare, and infrastructure.

We recognize that at least 17 Indian boarding schools have been identified as operating in Washington between 1857 and 1932.1 This legacy of separating Indigenous children from their parents continues. As of 2015, Indigenous children in our state were represented in foster care at a rate 3.6 times greater than the general child population of the state.2

We recognize that this legacy of harm manifests in other places. For every 100,000 Indigenous people across Washington, 88 go missing, which is nearly three times the statewide average for all people.3 Although Indigenous people make up only 2% of our population, they account for about 6% of the state’s homicide victims.4 According to 2024 U.S. Census data, 19% of Indigenous people in our state reported living below the poverty line.5

We recognize that the dehumanization and discrimination of Indigenous communities in this state is not just the truth of the past but the reality of the present, including within our court system. Courts are where we hope people can come to seek redress. When those courts have been, and continue to be, inaccessible, harmful, and unjust for our Tribal communities, we must not just take accountability for the harm but strive to rectify it. June 5, 2026 Page 3

We take to heart Justice Montoya-Lewis’s call to justice and accountability at this court’s 2025 Minority and Justice Symposium,

As state actors we must understand at a fundamental level that Tribal sovereignty is not a gift that is given, but rather inherently rooted in centuries of self-governance...

State and federal systems have been responsible for grave injustices towards Tribal nations, through broken treaties and polices that have harmed generations of Native families... The harm continues to manifest itself in the disparities our communities face, including long-standing intergenerational trauma, cycles of violence and abuse, disappearance, premature deaths, and additional undocumented physiological and psychological impacts.6

This court has and will continue to take steps to rectify discrimination. For example, in 2020, this court affirmed core provisions of the federal and Washington State Indian Child Welfare acts (ICWA and WICWA). We ruled that a “broad interpretation” must be used in determining whether children facing removal have Tribal heritage, citing the history of state-sponsored removal of Native American children and the destruction of Native families and communities.7

In 2021, this court began opening each new term with formal land acknowledgements. We understand, however, that symbolic acknowledgement without action is insufficient.

In June of 2025, the court joined with Squaxin Island Tribe Chairman Kris Peters in co-convening the first Tribal-Judicial Summit, with the goal of sharing knowledge of tribal culture and history with state court judges and building intergovernment relationships.

In April of this year, this court entered an order establishing the Tribal State Court Consortium as a formal Supreme Court entity. The Consortium will continue to serve as a collaborative forum for state and Tribal judicial officers to foster mutual understanding and respect such that they can address evolving jurisdictional challenges, explore opportunities for shared solutions, and recommend educational opportunities that support culturally competent practices. This court has also acted through the recent Minority and Justice Symposium, the Tribal State Court Consortium, and traveling court. June 5, 2026 Page 4

We have been correcting offensive language in past decisions; language that was used to justify denying the recognition of treaty rights.

We have acknowledged opinions that erred by denying treaty rights. In 2024, our court recognized that a Yakama Nation member had a treaty right to hunt on open and unclaimed land and vacated Jim Wallahee’s 1924 conviction.8 In 2020, our court recognized that a Yakama Nation member had a treaty right to fish in their usual and accustomed waters and vacated Alec Towessnute’s 1916 conviction.9 Both decisions rebuked our court’s prior use of infantilizing and dehumanizing language of Tribal people, while affirming Indigenous people’s rights within Washington.

Our work will not end here. We acknowledge that these actions cannot undue centuries of harm and pledge ourselves to do more. We also call upon the bench and bar to actively address incorrect and harmful precedent, acknowledge conscious and unconscious bias, and change our judicial system to reflect a just reality for our Indigenous communities.

We cannot do this work alone and we cannot do it without the guidance of Tribal communities and Tribal courts. We look forward to strengthening those relationships, and relying on Tribal expertise, as we continue this work.

Tribal Attorney Emily deLisle Joins Galanda Broadman

Emily deLisle has joined Galanda Broadman PLLC as an Associate, focusing on Tribal in-house and litigation matters. 

“We are so happy to have Emily join us,” said the firm’s managing lawyer Gabe Galanda. “We look forward to working with her to advance and protect our Tribal clients’ interests.”

Emily joins Galanda Broadman from another firm where she also worked on behalf of Indigenous and Tribal clients.  She previously spent two years clerking for Hon. Sunshine S. Sykes of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California. 

Before clerking, Emily completed a fellowship at the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) in Washington, DC, during which she worked with rural Tribal nations to improve Native voters’ access to the ballot and political representation through legislative redistricting.   

Emily graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 2021.  She holds a Bachelor of Arts in American History from the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts and Sciences, where her undergraduate thesis focused on the origins and founding of the Carlisle Indian School.

Galanda Broadman, PLLC , is an Indigenous rights law firm with offices in Seattle and Yakima, Washington and Bend, Oregon. The firm is dedicated to advancing Indian Treaty and other Tribal sovereign legal rights as well as Indigenous human rights.

Gabe Galanda Publishes Seattle Times Op-Ed Regarding State's Failed Indigenous Home Ownership Promises

Gabe Galanda published “Promise of tribal homeownership in WA remains unfulfilled” in the April 20, 2025 edition of The Seattle Times. An excerpt:

Twenty years. That’s how long Native American families across Washington paid rent on homes they were promised they would one day own. After 20 years of monthly payments, maintaining their properties and upholding all obligations asked of them, not one deed was transferred. Not one.

The promise of homeownership, extended to hundreds of Native families through the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, remains unfulfilled. The institution responsible for this failure is the Washington State Housing Finance Commission. And now, thanks to a text exchange that is a public record, we know exactly how commission leadership felt about a bipartisan bill that might have fixed it.

“Awful bill.” That is how, in text messages exchanged by commission leaders in January 2026, commission Executive Director Steve Walker described House Bill 2527 — reform legislation designed to hold private investors accountable for fulfilling homeownership promises made to Native families. Consultant Nick Federici was equally dismissive. “It’s idiotic,” he replied to Walker, who also called HB 2527 “lame.”

These were not offhand frustrations vented in isolation. They were part of a coordinated campaign to kill Native homeownership legislation before it could gain traction.

We Have Filled the Tribal Law and Litigation Associate Position

We appreciate everyone who applied.

Ryan Dreveskracht Publishes Federal Civil Rights Article in Trial News

Ryan Dreveskracht has published “The Benefits of Bringing a Federal Civil Rights Case,” in the Civil Rights edition of Trial News. An excerpt:

An action under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 is a federal civil rights case. It requires proof of constitutional harm. That could mean discrimination that falls under the Fourteenth Amendment ‘s Equal Protection Clause; excessive force under the Fourth Amendment; failure to provide adequate healthcare while confined under the Fourteenth or Eighth Amendments; or the maintenance of unconstitutional policies, procedures, or customs that result in one of these, or other, constitutional harms. A 42 U.S.C. § 1983 claim will typically be immediately removed to federal court by the defendants. Federal court can be intimidating. The procedures are stricter, the rules are unforgiving, judges expect near-perfection, and the jury must be unanimous.

State law negligence claims, on the other hand, do not require proving a constitutional harm. They only require proof that the defendant acted unreasonably, as compared to how any private person would act. These claims are tangible. Jurors understand them. They don’t require a crash course in constitutional law. The rules in state court are looser, the judges are more lenient, and a unanimous jury is not required.

In this article, I argue that the benefits of bringing a federal civil rights case, where possible, outweigh the challenges. To do so, I provide two examples of simple state law medical negligence cases pled, instead, as civil rights cases and brought in federal court.

Ryan is a partner at Galanda Broadman. His practice focuses defending individuals’ constitutional rights and bringing police misconduct and wrongful death cases on local and national levels.

Affiliated Northwest Tribes Demand ICE Respect Tribal Sovereignty and Human Rights

On Thursday, the 57 Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI) passed a Resolution insisting that United States immigration enforcement authorities respect Tribal territorial sovereignty and human rights.

Titled “Protecting Tribal Citizens and Communities from U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement,” ATNI Resolution #2026-009 was introduced to the ATNI General Assembly by Tulalip Tribal Councilwoman Theresa Sheldon and advanced to passage by the Lummi Nation.

The Resolution responds to increasing Tribal reports and concerns about militarized ICE officers improperly “profiling Tribal citizens, entering Tribal Treaty and reservation territories to stop, detain, search, and interrogate Tribal citizens and community members, and rejecting Tribal citizens’ Tribally-issued photo identification.” Those activities have deepened fear and anxiety in Tribal and urban Indigenous communities.

ATNI passed the Resolution “to help ease those unsafe and unhealthy feelings, deescalate rising personal and political tensions, and keep all Tribal citizens and community members safe from harm.”

The Resolution will now also be considered for adoption by the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), which is convening its Executive Council Winter Session in Washington, DC on Monday.

The operative parts of ATNI Resolution #2026-009 read as follows:

WHEREAS, Tribal, federal, and international law generally require the United States and Tribal Nations to consult regarding any federal law enforcement efforts related to any alleged offense against the laws of the United States occurring within Tribal Treaty and reservation territories; and

WHEREAS, Tribal, federal, and international law generally require officers and agents of the United States and Tribe to consult with and obtain permission from Tribal authorities before entering Tribal Treaty and reservation territories for federal law enforcement purposes; and

WHEREAS, according to United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Directive 071-04 (Dec. 15, 2022) on Consultation and Coordination with Tribal Nations, DHS and its U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) division must uphold “the various treaties and other agreements” with Tribal Nations, and to consult with Tribal Nations before the Department takes any action that their “inherent sovereign rights and governance over . . . their territories”; and

WHEREAS, the U.S. Department of the Interior Office of Justice Services (OJS) must conduct “meaningful and timely consultation with tribal leaders” regarding any federal actions “that affect public safety and justice in Indian country (25 U.S.C. 2801(c)(12)); and

WHEREAS, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) emphasizes “the contribution of the demilitarization of the lands and territories of Indigenous peoples to peace, economic and social progress and development, understanding and friendly relations among nations and peoples of the world”; and

WHEREAS, Article 31 of the UNDRIP provides: “Military activities shall not take place in the lands or territories of Indigenous peoples, unless . . . freely agreed with or requested by the indigenous peoples concerned,” and governments like the United States “shall undertake effective consultations with the indigenous peoples concerned, through appropriate procedures and in particular through their representative institutions, prior to using their lands or territories for military activities”; and

WHEREAS, photo identification issued to an enrolled Tribal citizen by a federally recognized Tribe are federally acceptable forms of identification, including before the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) under the federal REAL ID Act of 2005 (49 U.S.C. 30311 et seq.); and

WHEREAS, the federal Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 (25 U.S.C. 1301 et seq.) requires that the civil rights of all people in Tribal reservation territories be protected, including “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable search and seizures”; and

WHEREAS, under the federal Indian Civil Rights Act and Tribal law, the right of Tribal citizens to be secure in their persons on their Tribal Treaty, reserved rights, service areas, and reservation territories extends to all places not open to the public, including usual and accustomed territories, Tribal homes, schools, buildings, businesses, and private lands; and

WHEREAS, Tribal nations need not recognize administrative warrants issued by ICE agents or officers, which are not signed or issued by any judge; and

WHEREAS, there have been reports of militarized DHS and ICE officers and agents profiling Tribal citizens, entering Tribal Treaty and reservation territories to stop, detain, search, and interrogate Tribal citizens and community members, and rejecting Tribal citizens’ Tribally-issued photo identification, all in violation of those citizens’ human and civil rights and their Tribal nations’ rights; and

WHEREAS, Tribal Nations and their own law enforcement officers are positioned to help ease those unsafe and unhealthy feelings, deescalate rising personal and political tensions, and keep all Tribal citizens and community members safe from harm, including by exercising their duty to intervene; now

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, ATNI demands that all federal agencies, including all aspects of DHS, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Patrol, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, notify, consult with, and coordinate with Tribal nations, consistent with the federal government’s trust obligations before entering Tribal Treaty and reservation territories; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, ATNI demands DHS and ICE follow federal law by acknowledging Tribally-issued photo identification cards as they are federal acceptable photo identification and are proof of Tribal citizens’ and American citizenship status; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, ATNI encourages our member Tribal Nations to issue “Know Your Rights” bulletins with their tribal communities, such as those published by the Native American Rights Fund (NARF) and American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU); and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that this Resolution is not an endorsement nor rejection of any political party, federal administration, or ideology, but a reaffirmation of Tribal sovereignty, political status, jurisdiction, and each Tribal Nations’ responsibility to protect its people; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that this Resolution shall be immediately transmitted to DHS, specifically Senior Tribal Advisor David Flute, david.flute@hq.dhs.gov, and Office of Justice Services (OJS), specifically Director Rodney Lockett, Tribal.Affairs@dhs.gov.

Dr. King Prepared Us: We Must All Act Now To Stop Injustice

By Joe Sexton

The core message of Dr. King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” means more in 2026 than it has since the 1960s. Thankfully, he prepared us for this moment, and for America’s confrontation of overbroad and unjust immigration enforcement. 

Just as institutions failed initially to meet the moment of the Civil Rights struggle, our institutions now present little in the way of comfort. Even the Supreme Court of the United States has fallen short. In a shadow-docket decision handed down a few months ago, the Court sanctioned these injustices, allowing for racial profiling in immigration detentions.  The Court did so without briefing or argument, and without a majority opinion that addresses past precedent, statutes, regulations, and our Constitution. 

Even worse, Justice Kavanaugh penned a concurrence that hollows out the 4th Amendment’s protections when it comes to federal immigration enforcement actions against people who do not appear white. 

King wrote his 1963 letter while he was jailed for violating a state court order that barred demonstrations in Birmingham, Alabama.  His letter was a response to a message signed by eight white clergymen, all of whom were from Alabama.  In their missive, these clergymen pled with the Black community to stop demonstrating and protesting in Alabama, appealing to “the principles of law and order.”  They argued that when “rights are consistently denied” those aggrieved should work “in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets.”[1]  These fellow religious leaders complained of King and other “outsiders” stirring up “such actions as [to] incite hatred and violence,” lecturing those civil rights leaders that “however technically peaceful their actions may be” they do not resolve “our local problems.”

Injustice Is Never Merely Local.

King’s response was unequivocal:

I am in Birmingham because injustice is here . . . I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. . . Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.[2]

The Roberts Court today is reaffirming the truth of King’s message, and showing us how fragile the progress is that we as a nation made through the leadership of King and the civil rights movement, showing us the way through their peaceful resistance.  The clergymen who wrote King did not seem to be writing in bad faith.  They were very likely good people who wanted institutional racism to end on the one hand, and peace and tranquility to persist on the other, at the same time.  They believed in our justice system and the rule of law. 

But King understood that in the absence of resistance our system will not work on its own to root out injustice.  It will not stop a state whose leaders are committed to injustice as a means to whatever may be the ultimate end.  “We know through painful experience,” King answered the clergymen, “that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."[3]

The Supreme Court Has Fundamentally Altered 4th Amendment Law To Allow Racial Profiling As A Basis For Extended Detentions Of Lawful Citizens.

For half a century before this year’s decision in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo this past September, the Supreme Court had been skeptical of law enforcement’s reliance on ethnicity, race, or related factors as grounds for reasonable suspicion to justify arrests, often times throwing out criminal cases where the predicate for the seizure included alleged reasonable suspicion tied to someone’s ethnicity, or some other category that may describe a large category of otherwise innocent people, like speaking Spanish or having brown skin.[4] 

But Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence in Vasquez Perdomo provided a new framework—the "Kavanaugh Rule”—for immigration stops that accepts "apparent ethnicity," Spanish or accented English, presence at certain locations (like day‑labor corners or car washes), and low‑wage work as "relevant factors" that together can justify an interior immigration stop and seizure.[5] 

In effect, the Kavanaugh Rule blesses a suspicion template that sanctions sweeping immigration dragnets in non-white communities, targeting people of color directly because they are not white.[6]  Kavanaugh reassures us that these are only "brief investigative stops" and that "individuals who are U.S. citizens or otherwise lawfully present will be promptly released once their status is ascertained," portraying the intrusion as minimal and easily corrected.[7] 

Kavanaugh, however, ignores the reality of what was happening on the ground at the time he penned his concurrence,[8] and he disregards the potential for abuses depending on how the Trump government would leverage the Kavanaugh Rule.[9] 

Justice Sotomayor’s dissent warned that under the new Kavanaugh Rule, reasonable suspicion justifying arrest may be based on factors that describe millions of United States citizens and lawful residents whose only 'suspicion' is that they live and work while looking or sounding ‘foreign.’[10] The factors which may now form reasonable suspicion to detain someone “describe a very large category of presumably innocent” people and in practice sweep in “anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low‑wage job."[11]

The dissent forecasted that the Kavanaugh Rule effectively creating "a second‑class citizenship status."[12] The dissent was immediately proven right.  And we find ourselves once again in a place where innocent brown people—including Indigenous people, astonishingly—may find themselves in jail for extended periods merely because of the color of their skin, the language they speak, or the work they do. 

Under the Kavanaugh Rule, DHS is now at liberty to mark entire classes of non‑white people as presumptively suspect, and licenses militarized federal forces to violate those people’s human and constitutional rights, but only for “brief” periods in Kavanaugh’s view.  What we’ve seen emerge in the wake of Vasquez Perdomo and the Kavanaugh Rule shows race and ethnicity-based detentions that go beyond any reasonable definition of “brief.”  

A December 2025 report of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations documented 24 U.S. citizens whom ICE or CBP illegally detained or deported.[13] Of 22 citizens interviewed for the report, the government held seven for more than 24 hours, and several were held between 48 and 96 hours.[14] Examples include:

·      George Retes, a disabled U.S. Army veteran, pulled from his car and detained for more than three days despite his citizenship.

·      Javier Ramirez, a diabetic U.S. citizen father, beaten, shackled, and jailed for over 96 hours despite having proof of citizenship on his person.

·      Andrea Velez, a citizen held over 48 hours despite repeatedly asserting citizenship and having identification in her bag.

·      Chanthila Souvannarath, with a long‑standing citizenship claim, deported to Laos in 2025 in direct defiance of a federal court order—ICE simply ignored the judiciary.[15]

Even producing proof of citizenship, or offering to, does not reliably end these encounters.[16] In the real world, people of color confronted by armed agents cannot rely on the promise of a 'quick clarification' when officers already view them as presumptively deportable:

·      Javier Ramirez told agents he had valid U.S. ID and a passport in his pocket; an agent allegedly said "just get him, he's Mexican," and he was still detained four days.[17]

·      Leonardo Garcia Venegas, a U.S. citizen, was twice detained even after presenting an Alabama STAR ID—a document by law issued only to citizens—which agents dismissed as "fake."[18]

·      In Minneapolis, Mubashir Khalif Hussen, a U.S. citizen, was put in a headlock by plain‑clothes ICE agents while walking to lunch; he told them he was a citizen and offered to show his passport but was held for hours before anyone checked it.[19]

·      At a Minneapolis Target in January 2026, video shows two employees violently tackled and handcuffed inside the store by federal officers; state officials later confirmed both were U.S. citizens; at least one of these victims insisted he was a citizen as he was dragged away.[20]

These are not brief investigative stops. They are prolonged, sometimes violent warrantless seizures.  This is precisely the kind of abuse the Fourth Amendment was intended to protect against.

DHS Is Targeting First Americans.

And now because being a person of color may be used as a predicate for warrantless arrests and detentions, DHS is targeting Indigenous people.  The Native American Rights Fund (NARF) describes ICE abducting Tribal members—"the first peoples of this land”—based solely on racial profiling.[21]  We increasingly hear of ICE showing up at Tribal casinos and enterprises to question and detain Indigenous workers whose citizenship is not in doubt, but whose appearance fits the immigration "profile" the Supreme Court has licensed ICE to target.[22] Knowing that ICE lacks jurisdiction over citizens is little comfort to first peoples who are detained and justifiably afraid. 

This administration would no doubt dismiss any violence against a detainee as warranted. So resisting appears to carry more risk than it ever has.  Possession of a claim against the United States for violating one’s rights is little comfort to the dead. King insisted that "an unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself," and this is exactly what the Kavanaugh Rule represents: a Fourth Amendment that functions fully for whites and the powerful, but only conditionally, if at all, for communities of color.[23]  The problem, as King noted, is that “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”[24]

We Must All Work For Change To End This Regression.

King warned that the greatest stumbling block might not be the open racist, but the "white moderate who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice."[25] A Supreme Court that privileges federal "immigration sweeps" and "order" over the explicit, documented violations of the Fourth Amendment against non‑white citizens is reenacting that very dynamic from the bench.

This is regression, aiming our trajectory backwards to the dark days of genocide and segregation. Allowing armed federal agents to detain people inside our borders because they are brown, Indigenous, Somali, or otherwise marked as "foreign," and then excusing extended detentions of citizens as necessary to preserve law and order moves the United States back toward an era when full rights were reserved for whites and men, and everyone else's liberty was subject to conditions and exceptions.

By normalizing racialized dragnets and hollowing out Fourth Amendment protections for entire classes of people, we are undermining King’s work. The movement King catalyzed in the 20th century aimed to dismantle this oppression through non-violent resistance. To stop this regression, I believe we all need to resist, even those of us privileged enough to be safe from the terror we are watching visited upon our non-white neighbors.  We must take King’s final public words to heart and turn them into action; words he gave us in a speech the night before he was gunned down in Memphis:

If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn't committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren't going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren't going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on.

We need all of you.[26]

Joe Sexton is a partner at Galanda Broadman, PLLC.  Joe’s practice focuses on tribal sovereignty issues, including complex land and environmental issues, and economic development matters.  He is a Unites States Marine Corps veteran. He can be reached at (509) 910-8842 and joe@galandbroadman.com. 

[1] Letter from clergymen to King, found here.

[2] Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From A Birmingham Jail.”

[3] Id.

[4] See e.g., United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U.S. 873, 885–87 (1975) (“Mexican appearance” alone cannot justify stopping a car; “large numbers of native-born and naturalized citizens have the physical characteristics identified with Mexican ancestry.”);  see also Reid v. Georgia, 448 U.S. 438, 441 (1980) (per curiam) (Court declines to find reasonable suspicion based on “circumstances [that] describe a very large category of presumably innocent travelers who would be subject to virtually random seizures . . .”).

[5] Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, 606 U.S. ___ (2025)(Kavanaugh, J., concurring). https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a169_5h25.pdf (Kavanaugh, J., concurring); see also "Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Racial Proxies," SCOTUSblog, September 24, 2025, https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/09/justice-brett-kavanaugh-and-racial-proxies/.

[6] The Supreme Court Decision on ICE and Racial Profiling, Explained," The New York Times, September 8, 2025, https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/us/politics/supreme-court-immigration-racial-profiling.html; Native American Rights Fund, "NARF Statement on Unlawful ICE Activity," January 15, 2026, https://narf.org/narf-statement-ice/; "Minnesota Legislators Confirm Minneapolis Police Conduct ICE Sweeps," NPR, November 5, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/11/05/nx-s1-5598373/npr-fact-checks-kristi-noem-on-ice-detaining-us-citizens.

[7] Id.

[8] “The concurrence relegates the interests of U. S. citizens and individuals with legal status to a single sentence, positing that the Government will free these individuals as soon as they show they are legally in the United States . . . That blinks reality. Two plaintiffs in this very case tried to explain that they are U. S. citizens; one was then pushed against a fence with his arms twisted behind his back, and the other was taken away from his job to a warehouse for further questioning.” Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo, 606 U.S. ___, ___ (2025) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). In the post-Kavanaugh-Rule America, even those brief detentions are mild by comparison to what is happening to many brown people who are being ripped from their vehicles and workplaces, violently restrained and thrown into the backs of unmarked SUVs, and driven to detention centers where they are likely searched, have their valuables seized, and thrown into a cell without any ability to contact family or legal counsel, and if they’re fortunate, released hours later without charges because ultimately they did nothing wrong.  They were merely non-white and existing in America. 

[9] "Target Employees Detained by Federal Officers Were U.S. Citizens," KCCI-8, YouTube, January 12, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE9NmlNeiIQ; Native American Rights Fund, "NARF Statement on Unlawful ICE Activity," January 15, 2026, https://narf.org/narf-statement-ice/; Pear, Robert, "ICE Barbie Warns Americans Must Be Prepared to Prove Citizenship," The Daily Beast, January 15, 2026, https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-barbie-warns-americans-must-be-prepared-to-prove-citizenship/.

[10] See Vasquez Perdomo, 606 U.S. ___, ___ (2025) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting).

[11] Id.

[12] Id.

[13] Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, "Unchecked Authority: How ICE and CBP Illegally Detained and Deported U.S. Citizens," December 8, 2025, https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025.12.8_ICE-Report-revised-FINAL.pdf.

[14] Id.

[15] National Immigrant Project of the National Lawyers Guild, "ICE Deports Man Claiming U.S. Citizenship to Laos Despite Federal Court Order," October 28, 2025, https://nipnlg.org/news/press-releases/ice-deports-man-claiming-us-citizenship-laos-despite-federal-court-order.

[16] Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, "Unchecked Authority," supra note 13.

[17] Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, "Unchecked Authority," supra note 13.

[18] Id.

[19] ICE Agents Wrongfully Detained US Citizen, Minneapolis Mayor Says," CBS Minnesota, December 10, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/minneapolis-leaders-say-us-citizen-was-wrongfully-arrested-by-ice-agents/ ; ACLU, "ACLU Sues Federal Government to End ICE, CBP's Practice of Suspicionless Stops, Warrantless Arrests," January 14, 2026, https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-sues-federal-government-to-end-ice-cbps-practice-of-suspicionless-stops-warrantless-arr.

[20] "Target Employees Detained by Federal Officers Were U.S. Citizens," KCCI-8, YouTube, January 12, 2026, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mE9NmlNeiIQ.

[21] Native American Rights Fund, "NARF Statement on Unlawful ICE Activity," supra note 6.

[22]Native Nations Mobilize Against ICE Targeting and Profiling, UNDERSCORE NEWS (Feb. 10, 2025), https://www.underscore.news/justice/federal-policy/native-nations-mobilize-against-ice-targeting-and-profiling/.; see also Native Americans Are Being Swept Up by ICE in Minneapolis, Tribes Say, WASH. POST (Jan. 15, 2026), https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/01/15/native-americans-ice-minneapolis/.

[23] King, "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," supra note 1

[24] Id.

[25] Id.

[26] Martin Luther King, Jr., I’ve Been to the Mountaintop (Apr. 3, 1968), in AM. RHETORIC, https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm

May Your Holidays Be Filled With Love and Light

Joe Sexton, Ethan Jones Admitted to State Bar of Arizona

Indigenous rights lawyers Joe Sexton and Ethan Jones have secured admission to the State Bar of Arizona.

With five University of Arizona Law School and Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program alumni, Galanda Broadman's connections to Arizona Indian country run deep.

For more information about Joe's practice: https://www.galandabroadman.com/profiles/r-joseph-sexton

For more information about Ethan's: https://www.galandabroadman.com/ethan-jones