Amelia Schafer
ICT
When Leticia Jacobo was booked into the Polk County Jail in Des Moines, Iowa, for a traffic violation, the 24-year-old Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community citizen didn’t know she’d later be slated for deportation and flagged as a suspected undocumented immigrant.
“I was unaware of what was going on,” Jacobo said. “It wasn’t until I gave my mom a call and she told me, ‘You probably won’t be getting out because you have an ICE hold.'”
While attempting to organize Jacobo’s discharge on Nov. 11, Jacobo’s mother Ericka Burns discovered her daughter would no longer be eligible for release. Instead, the Native woman was now on an immigration hold, set to be taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and eventually deported to an undisclosed location.
Jacobo said she never interacted with any ICE agents, and Polk County Corrections Officers began informing her of the next steps on what was supposed to be her last day in jail.
“I was informed that (ICE) was on their way and I was going to have to sit tight and wait for somebody,” she said.
Family would discover that a week before Jacobo was set to be released, the Polk County Sheriff’s department flagged Jacobo as a suspected undocumented immigrant in Polk County Jail, in what the department is calling a “clerical error.”
The Polk County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to requests for comment by ICT.
“I haven’t gotten any type of apology or anything,” Jacobo said. “It’s like they’re brushing it off.”
Jacobo said this isn’t the first incident she’s had with Polk County. On numerous occasions Corrections Officers asked Jacobo to translate for Spanish-speaking inmates and berated her for not speaking Spanish.
“I kept trying to explain to them that I’m Native American,” she said.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said the error was made on the county’s part and did not have anything to do with ICE yet. Family members caught the error before Jacobo was sent into ICE custody.
“ICE doesn’t have any jurisdiction over how the county does business,” the spokesperson said.
Department officials said the error was made because ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations in Des Moines was seeking an immigration detainee named Reina Jacobo, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, also known as Reina Ramirez Gamez.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has continuously said that no American citizens have been arrested or detained, despite reports that indicate otherwise.
“This reads like a fantasy novel, because it is one,” the department said in a Nov. 14 post on X. “This individual was never in ICE custody.”
In a now deleted post on X, Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin also said the story was “dead wrong.”
The family has never said she was in ICE custody. In her mugshot, Jacobo is pictured in a lime-green, striped jumpsuit similar to those worn by ICE detainees.
Jacobo and her family said they know what happened. Despite being a citizen of a tribal nation, Jacobo had been marked for deportation and placed on hold for transfer to immigration control officials and on Nov. 11 they knew they had to work quickly to ensure it didn’t happen.
Back in Arizona, Jacobo’s relatives immediately began to work on a strategy to stop her deportation. Because it was Veteran’s Day, the Salt River Pima Tribe wasn’t open and neither were many other organizations that could’ve helped. So the family took to Facebook, detailing the situation and asking for help, which they received in abundance from all corners of Indian Country, said Jacobo’s aunt, Maria Nunez.
The Salt River Pima Maricopa Indian Community, Jacobo’s tribe, is located in suburban Phoenix, over 1,400 miles from Des Moines.
“(The public) really did their job to help and we got a hold of a lot of important people that we needed to,” she said.
With help from the Meskwaki Nation, Iowa’s only federally recognized tribe, and other Indigenous organizations and allies, Jacobo’s deportation was halted and she was freed on Nov. 12. Nunez said the family had never spoken to the Meskwaki Nation before.
“(Meskwaki) reached out and said, ‘Hey we’re here, we’re only a 50-minute drive, we have our people ready,’” Nunez said. “I was just so amazed by all the love and caring that people have. It reassured us that we have people on our side.”
There are currently two other inmates in the Polk County Jail with the last name Jacobo, according to the Polk County Inmate roster, both are also wearing lime-green jumpsuits. Neither share a similar first name or age to Leticia.
With Jacobo free, the family is working to educate the public on what she went through and prevent another Native person from potential deportation.
“They can’t just go after people that are brown,” Nunez said. “I pray this doesn’t happen to anyone else. I pray that everyone stands together and sticks up for each other. We can’t have this happen again. Next time we may not catch it.”
Approximately 1.1 percent of Iowa’s population is American Indian or Alaska Native, according to the 2020 census‘s alone and in combination data. Because of this, Iowans often assume someone with Indigenous features is Latino, said Sikowis Nobiss, Plains Cree/Saulteaux of the George Gordon First Nation and the executive director of the Great Plains Action Society.
The Great Plains Action Society is a Native-led nonprofit organization working toward Indigenous visibility through community activism in the Great Plains region.
Jacobo said people, especially Corrections Officers, frequently assume she’s Latina and don’t respond when she informs them she’s Native. On several occasions, businesses have denied her use of her tribal ID card as a valid form of documentation.
Notably, Iowa has seen numerous immigration raids this year, with a 276 percent increase in searches. The midwestern state’s agricultural industry, whether it’s pork, corn or soybeans, relies heavily on the labor of immigrant workers, both documented and undocumented.
Many of these individuals detained have Indigenous ancestry, and Nobiss said she feels raids are another way for the U.S. government to further divide and remove Indigenous peoples.
“I think that although a lot of us have always seen that border as a place of persecution and genocide,” Nobiss said.
A September Supreme Court ruling temporarily gave ICE officials in Los Angeles the ability to conduct stops based on the individual’s race, a practice called racial profiling. However, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said racial profiling was not a factor in Jacobo’s case.
Across the Midwest, recent reports of ICE officers conducting stops on Native people in Rapid City, South Dakota, caught the attention of local advocates like Bre Gibson, lay advocate for the Oglala Sioux Tribe and a National Lawyers Guild member.
In the spring, Gibson, Oglala Lakota, conducted several information sessions for Native people on how to react when they’re stopped by an ICE agent. Those same lessons remain true today – Native people should record all interactions they have with ICE and any interactions they may see happening, she said.
“I think in this new political climate being a person of color, being brown, is reason enough that they’re saying for them to pull you over,” Gibson said. “As tribal members, we not only have constitutional rights, but we also have treaty rights, and the benefit of being able to even have tribal identification can be super important.”
When recording interactions with ICE, individuals should note how many officers are present, what vehicles they’re driving, where the interaction is happening, and what time of day it is, Gibson said. The more information someone is able to provide, the better.
“Sharing that information, it’s part of wanting to be a good relative,” Gibson said. “But I think it’s really important that they include specific details so that people can be informed of what places that they should avoid.”
Inaccurate or incomplete information can create panic, she said.
“Remaining calm and keeping your composure is such a powerful tool, because we know a lot of times that they will try to pull you out of character, because that will give them reason to escalate,” she said.
When she was first booked, Jacobo had her personal items taken and catalogued, one of which was her Salt River Pima tribal identification card.
“If my sister didn’t go in there and see that mess-up, there would have been no one to catch it,” Nunez said. “She had her tribal ID, how do you mistake that? How do you mistake someone that has a Social Security number?”
The situation was terrifying for family members, she said, especially with their tribe and most of the family over 1,400 miles away in Arizona.
“No one was giving us answers,” Nunez said. “She could have been taken out of the country, and we don’t know where she would have been taken to.”
There’s a lack of data on how many American Indian or Alaska Native people have been stopped, questioned or detained by ICE. This is partially due to a lack of reporting, but also the Department of Homeland Security’s consistent denial that any U.S. citizen has been detained.
In early 2025, Native people living in the U.S. Southwest reported instances of ICE officials detaining tribal citizens, with Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren saying he’s heard of citizens having “traumatizing” experiences.
Tribes nationwide are urging their citizens to carry their tribal IDs, Certificate of Degree of Indian Blood cards or descendancy paperwork on them at all times.
During the government shutdown, several tribes, including the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe in central South Dakota, were unable to issue new tribal IDs or CDIB cards. Now that the shutdown has ended, those services are operational, said the tribe’s chairman, Boyd Gourneau.