IT’S COMPLICATED –
May 24, 2023 – Navajo leaders said they will staff a Phoenix operations center to help Navajo tribal members displaced when sober living homes caught up in the fraud investigation are indicted or their Medicaid funding is cut off.
“I view this as a humanitarian and a human rights crisis,” said Navajo Attorney General Ethel Branch, adding that the goal is to get victimized people into treatment programs and ultimately back with their families.
Branch said she believes the operators of the homes should also be investigated for human trafficking, but that has not been part of the probe so far.
Navajo officials say that in some cases, people were picked up in white vans and driven to the Phoenix area from places as far away as the sprawling Navajo Nation that stretches across northern Arizona and parts of New Mexico and Utah. In some cases, the people allegedly didn’t even know the location of the homes where they were staying.
