A tribe is losing reservation status for its more than 300 acres in Massachusetts, raising fears among Native American groups that other tribes could face the same fate under the Trump administration.

The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe was notified late Friday by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs that it will be rescinding its reservation designation and removing the land from federal trust, according to Cedric Cromwell, the tribe’s chairman.

He said the move is “cruel” and “unnecessary” as the tribe and others across the nation are struggling to respond to the coronavirus pandemic within their sovereign lands.

“Talk about being blindsided. It was a sucker punch in the face from the bully you thought was your friend,” he said Monday. “I thought they were calling to see how we’re doing in all of this. To do it at 4 p.m. on a Friday during a pandemic? That’s sneaky.”

The U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees Native American affairs, is obligated by a recent federal court decision to remove the special land designations, which were bestowed in 2015 under then-President Barack Obama, according to Conner Swanson, an agency spokesman.

In February, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston upheld a lower court decision declaring the federal government had not been authorized to take land into trust for the Cape Cod-based tribe, which traces its ancestry to the Native Americans that shared a fall harvest meal with the Pilgrims in 1621.

The Mashpee Wampanoag tribe declined to challenge that decision, but Cromwell argues a separate lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., is still pending.