Nashville, Tennessee (AP) — Federal immigration officials, working together with the Tennessee Highway Patrol, have taken over 100 people into custody in a major operation, leaving many in Nashville’s immigrant community feeling anxious and uncertain.
“None of us have ever seen anything like this,” Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, said Friday.
The operation, which involved US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), highlights how local and state law enforcement are essential to President Donald Trump’s plans for large-scale deportations. Just last week, Florida officials reported a similar operation with ICE that resulted in 1,120 immigration arrests.
The Highway Patrol said on Friday that they made 588 stops during the joint operation with ICE, which resulted in 103 people being taken into custody for immigration violations.
The Highway Patrol stated that the stops “led to the recovery of illegal drugs and firearms — taking dangerous elements off the street and making Tennessee safer.” One of the people arrested was wanted for a murder in El Salvador.
Tennessee’s Governor Bill Lee recently signed a law that created a new immigration enforcement division within the state’s Department of Safety and Homeland Security, which includes the Highway Patrol. Lee is one of several Republican officials who have pledged to use state resources to help carry out Trump’s immigration plans.
At the same time, officials in Nashville, a city that typically supports the Democratic Party, have distanced themselves from the operation and criticized the arrests. Nashville’s Law Director, Wally Dietz, said the state-federal operation, which started on May 3, caught city officials off guard.
When asked about the presence of Nashville police near an ICE office, Dietz said on Wednesday that the city “routinely receives requests for extra patrols for a variety of reasons and responds to the extent resources are available.” He added that he didn’t know who had been detained and that, when he asked the Highway Patrol for more details, he was told to submit a public records request.
The Highway Patrol explained that their stops were based only on how drivers behaved. “We do not enter neighborhoods or stop vehicles based on who someone is — we stop based on what they do behind the wheel,” they said.
However, supporters of immigrant rights argue that the patrols have been focused on areas where many people of color live.
“All signs point to this being racial profiling intended to terrorize the heart of the immigrant and refugee community,” Sherman Luna said. “What we’ve heard is that THP is flagging people down for things like a broken taillight or tinted windows.”
Sherman Luna believes some of those detained might be able to stay in the country if they had good legal help during an immigration hearing. Instead, she says many people are agreeing to be deported because they are afraid they could spend months or even years in immigration detention.
According to the Migration Policy Institute’s analysis of census data, about 9% of the population in the Nashville metropolitan area, which is about 2 million people, are immigrants. Many of them come from Mexico and Honduras, and the city also has a large Kurdish population, along with refugees from Sudan, Myanmar, and other countries.
“It’s a strategy to strike fear into our vibrant, diverse, beautiful neighborhoods,” Sherman Luna said.
