Hageman pressures Trump to help stop drug and human trafficking

CASPER — U.S. Rep. Harriet Hageman said she told President Donald Trump during a recent conversation with the former president that she wanted his help in ending drug and human trafficking on Native American reservations.

One of his biggest concerns is the growing trend of drug cartels appearing on reservations, particularly Wind River in Wyoming.

This issue has been raised twice during meetings of the House Natural Resources Committee, of which Hageman is a member.

Mexican drug cartels have expanded their operations to border cities in the southern United States and even further north, to Wyoming and Montana, she said.

Drug addiction has taken its toll on Wyoming’s Wind River Reservation, with criminal cartels repeatedly targeting those communities for methamphetamine and fentanyl distribution, according to a report released by the committee in April.

Between 2003 and 2006, methamphetamine took over the Wind River reservation, leading to a drastic increase in crime, including a 163 percent increase in drug possession, a 218 percent increase in domestic violence and a 131 percent increase in child neglect, according to NBC News.

Although the drug trafficking network was dismantled at that time, the cartels did not stop and continued numerous and repeated incursions into the reserve.

In 2020, the Northern Arapaho Business Council had to declare a state of emergency due to high rates of methamphetamine addiction in their community.

Hageman, who is also chairman of the Indian and Insular Affairs subcommittee, said cartels get tribal members hooked on drugs and then make them work for them in slave-like conditions to feed their addiction.

“The only way they can continue to get drugs is if they do really bad things,” she said.

Montana too

Hageman said there is a direct link between the increase in drug trafficking and human trafficking on reservations, reaching what she calls “crisis proportions” in Montana.

“It’s a tragedy beyond tragedy,” she said.

Bryce Kirk, a tribal executive council member of the Fort Peck Tribes in Poplar, Montana, told the Natural Resources Committee in April that 5 pounds of methamphetamine and 5,000 fentanyl pills were seized on his reservation and sent through the mail.

If those pills had hit the street, Kirk said they would have been valued at $500,000.

“You think about the people who are running away, you think about the things that are happening,” he said.

Jeffrey Stiffarm, chairman of the Fort Belknap Indian Community, pointed to a cartel killing on a reservation near his in Harlem, Montana, that left two tribal members dead.

He said cartels target reservations because they are easy to blend in with the population and because of the relative lack of law enforcement compared to other areas, with only one agent available to cover his 700,000-acre reservation.

Stiffarm said many studies have been conducted to try to combat human and drug trafficking on reservations, but they have never come to fruition.

“We are left alone to fight this problem against hundreds of thousands of cartel members who come into this country, break into our reservations, break into our homes, rape and murder our people,” he said.

He and Kirk said they found it frustrating to see billions of dollars sent overseas rather than going to tribal members.

Kirk said girls as young as 14 are being trafficked from his reservation to Williston, North Dakota, to escape their poor living conditions, but unbeknownst to them, they face a much worse fate.

“We need help,” Kirk said. “We will continue to make a difference in our communities with the crumbs that are given to us. We will continue to fight to save our people.”

Biden Connection

Hageman believes this situation is a direct consequence of President Joe Biden’s handling of immigration at the southern border.

“I’ve talked to him (Trump) a little bit about this because I don’t think most people understand that this is another side effect of opening the borders and not vetting people who are coming across,” Hageman said. “I think it’s something the president (Trump) needs to be aware of.”

Biden has established several task forces to address the problems of human trafficking and the growth of fentanyl.

In 2023, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, the first Native American woman to be appointed as a cabinet secretary, announced the creation of a new Missing and Murdered Persons Unit within the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The unit is specifically tasked with investigating missing and murdered Native Americans and Alaska Natives, with access to law enforcement resources from across federal agencies.

Trump “is full of energy”

In addition to talking about the southern border, Hageman said Trump is excited and ready to seize the opportunity to lead the country again.

“He’s ready to govern, he’s enthusiastic, he’s full of energy,” Hageman said.

She said Trump was eager to hear about the issues facing Wyoming, a state she believes will support Trump’s agenda if he is reelected. Wyoming voted for Trump by a larger margin than any other state in the 2020 presidential election.

“We’re going to turn this country around,” Hageman said in a speech at a political rally in Casper on Sunday. “We’re going to take our country back. We’re doing it not only in Washington, but we’re doing it right here in Wyoming.”

Hageman told Cowboy State Daily that she and Trump also talked about the recent debate he had with President Joe Biden. She said Trump may have been as surprised as anyone by Biden’s lackluster performance.

“He was even surprised to some extent,” she said.

Hageman accused first lady Jill Biden of committing “elder abuse” by letting her husband participate in the debate.

Although Biden was almost universally criticized for his performance in the debate, many of his supporters claimed that he won the debate on policy issues and that Trump lied or misrepresented a number of facts.

Leo Wolfson can be contacted at [email protected].