NASHVILLE, TN — As 2025 has closed out, ICE detentions have reached staggering numbers, with the Vera Institute of Justice reporting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has detained nearly 6,000 people in Tennessee alone. ICE raids in large cities kicked off in 2025 in a big way, as the department worked to live up to President Donald Trump’s promise of deporting a million people during his first year of office. The arrests have been taking different shapes throughout Tennessee, with concentrated operations taking place around Nashville in tandem with the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) and more gradual efforts taking place in Memphis, where daily arrests are made more quietly.
Achieving greater numbers of arrests has been made easier with what are known as 287(g) agreements, which allow local Tennessee law enforcement to work with ICE. Homeland security calls its ability to increase deportations a “force multiplier.” Lisa Sherman Luna, executive director at the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, said in a recent interview with WKRN that it is bad for Tennessee. Sherman Luna said Tennessee went from only two 287(g) agreements to several dozen. “It is a program that is rife with civil rights violations, that is incredibly costly to local governments, and erodes trust with local law enforcement within the community,” she said. “Now, if you’re an immigrant, you’re not going to call law enforcement when you’ve been a victim of a crime.”
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security reports that the operation between the THP and ICE agents that occurred in May ended with 196 arrests. According to the Department Data Project, ICE performed 800 arrests in Tennessee in October, many in jails. Robertson County Jail saw yearly ICE detainments increase from 18 to 128, while in Wilson County, they increased from 22 to 110, and total arrests in Tennessee have nearly doubled since last year.
Data analyzed by MLK50 suggests that nearly half of the arrests recorded in Memphis in the first seven months of 2025 have been people not convicted of any crime. In early May, the THP conducted traffic stops in an area in Nashville with a predominantly Hispanic population while ICE agents followed, with almost 70 percent of those arrested by ICE that weekend having no criminal record.
Even with arrests of people who proved to be convicted criminals, data has not circulated on these criminals that reflects that the United States has regularly received and harbored large populations of the “worst of the worst” from countries in Africa, South America, and Central America, as Republican representatives such as Andy Ogles have been claiming.
At least 400 people were arrested by ICE in the Memphis area during the first seven months of 2025, a 25 percent increase from the number of people arrested in the same period a year prior, according to data provided by ICE in response to an FOIA lawsuit to the Deportation Data Project. The report continues that one out of every three people arrested had not yet been convicted of a crime. According to MLK50, Memphis community leaders have said this reflects what they have experienced over several months, with Hispanic people being picked up with quieter methods, sending waves of fear throughout local communities.
In the same report, Maria Oceja, co-founder of Vecindarios 901, said ICE operations appear more undercover in Memphis than other major cities, as agents often accompany other federal agencies engaging in unrelated operations. To make the arrests easier, Trump’s administration reversed policies that made it difficult for ICE agents to apprehend people in zones designated as “sensitive areas” such as schools, churches, and courthouses.
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