PHOENIX (AP) – After the state cracked down on Medicaid fraud and barred unlicensed sober housing, Navajo law enforcement teams said the numbers of various tribes living on the streets in the Phoenix metropolitan area The Navajo Attorney General announced that he has been in contact with 100 Native Americans. Ethel Branch said on Monday:
The team, which includes Navajo police officers, has reported contact with more than 270 Native Americans, most of whom are Navajo, Branch said.
Branch said many tribe members accepted offers to stay in motel rooms and other temporary housing for a few days before being moved to legal facilities, while others returned to the reservation. agreed. The team worked with local law enforcement and Community Bridges, a nonprofit that provides services to addicts.
“Unfortunately, many of our relatives didn’t have cell phones when they came out of the facility,” Branch said, adding that Navajo police officers used their cell phones to tell those they found. He added that he was allowed to call his family.
Navajo law enforcement teams have returned to the reservation for now, but the Navajo will maintain a presence in Phoenix through an operations center.
The Navajo launched Operation Rainbow Bridge after Arizona announced last month that it would cut Medicaid funding for more than 100 unlicensed and fraudulent temperance homes, most of them in the Phoenix metropolitan area. . Affected homes are closing, leaving many people who had sought professional help to overcome their addictions homeless.
Operation Rainbow Bridge Toolbox includes: Facebook page The TikTok account is currently under construction. There is also a 211 hotline that the tribe promotes to its members to help affected people find places to stay and get the services they need.
In some cases, those who reached their homes were placed in unmarked vans, according to Navajo officials, in remote areas of the vast Navajo Nation, which spans northern Arizona and parts of New Mexico and Utah. He was reportedly driven from the location to the Phoenix area. It is unclear who paid for transporting people home.
The Arizona Health Care Cost Control System, which oversees the state’s Medicaid program, paid for addiction and other mental health services under the American Indian Medical Program, which state officials said services were billed to each household but never delivered.
State officials believe the fake homes defrauded Arizona of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicaid shares. Arizona authorities have so far seized $75 million and filed 45 indictments in investigations that include the FBI and the Office of the Attorney General.
Arizona officials said hundreds of fake humble homes are now believed to be operating in the Phoenix area and other parts of the state.
