Immigrant advocates highlight Tennessee role in Trump administration’s mass deportation plans

During the early hours of Sunday morning, legal advocates with the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition awakened to buzzing cellphones.

More than 120 men and women had been rounded up by immigration agents inside the Memphis nightclub, El Corralón. Their families and friends needed help.

“Parents didn’t come home. Roommates and friends stopped answering the phone. Workers and business owners didn’t show up on Monday morning and cars were left in the parking lot of the nightclub,” said Lisa Sherman Luna, the coalition’s executive director. 

The raid, executed through at least two search warrants obtained by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation in Shelby County Criminal Court, and reviewed by the Tennessee Lookout, was among the largest immigrant roundups in recent Tennessee history. 

The incident occurred amid an escalation in immigrant arrests nationwide that began at the start of summer, following a temporary decline in activity after the January shooting deaths by ICE agents of two Minneapolis residents.

Homeland Security confirms 121 immigrant arrests in Memphis nightclub raid

Trump administration officials have touted the immigration crackdowns, in Memphis and elsewhere, as both part of a broader public safety push and a fulfillment of the president’s campaign promises to stem illegal immigration. 

“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, crime in the city of Memphis has plummeted,” a statement from Department of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin said this week. 

“A big part of that success comes from arresting and deporting illegal aliens in the city,” the statement said.

On Thursday, Sherman Luna joined national immigration advocates during a press conference to discuss the Memphis raid and other recent events in Tennessee that, they said, highlight the state’s increasingly pivotal role in the Trump administration immigration enforcement and deportation agenda.

The Memphis nightclub raid is among a recent string of events in Tennessee tied to the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

In May and June, four Black men were fatally shot in separate incidents by members of the Memphis Safe Task Force, a concentrated crime fighting effort that has brought multiple federal and state agencies, and the Tennessee National Guard, to Memphis. The task force includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Homeland Security Investigations, which both enforce immigration law. A Homeland Security Investigations officer fired her weapon during one of the four fatal encounters, according to the TBI.  No charges have been brought against officers in any of the fatal shootings.

Late last month, the Lookout first reported the federal government’s $63 million contract with the Alaska-based Koniag corporation to establish a 24-7 ICE call center in Tennessee to more closely coordinate with local law enforcement across the country to locate and detain immigrants, including children. 

ICE changes location of Tennessee call center site from Adams to Nashville

(Contract documents initially placed the ICE coordination center in Adams, Tenn. before being updated to reflect Nashville is its planned location). A spokesperson for Koniag this week did not respond to a request for more information. A spokesperson for ICE declined to discuss details of the planned coordination center.

The federal activities, paired with a slew of state-level legislation introducing immigration status verification into routine interactions with state and local government, “are turning Tennessee into a national hub for the mass deportation machine,” Sherman Luna said. 

Hadi Sedigh, senior strategist with the National Immigration Law Center called Tennessee a “testing ground” for the Trump administration as it puts into place similar task force collaborations between federal and local law enforcement elsewhere. Sedigh also highlighted a key priority of the Trump administration to expand so-called 287(g) agreements that delegate immigration arrest powers to local police and sheriffs. 

The administration’s goal has been codified into law in Tennessee, with legislation enacted this year requiring all sheriffs and police departments to enter the agreements by 2027. Tennessee was among the first states to implement the requirement as part of a package of legislation targeting immigrants that grew out of meetings between Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton and White House advisor Stephen Miller. 

“The mechanisms that helped make the midnight raid in Memphis possible, namely the 287(g) agreements and the joint federal task force model are, in effect, rapidly increasing in a number of jurisdictions throughout the country,” he said.