Everyone in Memphis is talking about President Trump’s plans to send the National Guard here.
But we really need to be talking about other federal agents who are coming, too: Trump’s immigrant hunters.
The immigrant hunters cover their faces in masks. They arrest men, women and children.
I’m talking, of course, about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. They are likely among the federal task force agents who began making arrests here this week.
Thanks to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, ICE agents are now empowered to carry out open racial profiling.
As ICE agents operate in larger numbers in Memphis in the coming days and weeks, they will be free to harass and question anyone they believe might be an immigrant — anyone with brown skin, who speaks Spanish, or who speaks English with an accent.
My wife is an immigrant, a naturalized U.S. citizen from the Dominican Republic. Every time she leaves the house these days, she carries her U.S. passport. That’s because if she’s not carrying her passport — if she can’t prove on the spot that she’s a U.S. citizen — she could very well land in an immigration prison.
She could end up like Andrea Velez of Los Angeles, a U.S. citizen who described being swept up in an immigration raid earlier this year. “They never identified themselves as ICE agents. They just started chasing people,” she told PBS.
Velez told the agents she was a U.S. citizen. “It didn’t seem like they cared,” she said. She was ignored, locked up for two days, and charged with a felony. (The case was later dropped.)
Scenes like this will likely play out in Memphis. President Donald Trump’s September 15 memorandum establishing the Memphis Safe Task Force explicitly states that, among other things, the coalition of federal, state and local agencies will “enforce Federal immigration law.”
Trump’s memorandum also lists Homeland Security Investigations as one of 13 participating federal agencies in the Memphis task force.
This agency, also known as ICE-HSI, was formerly the arm of ICE that carried out investigations of large-scale drug trafficking, child pornography and other serious international crimes.
That’s not its mission anymore.
In February, USA Today reported that Trump had ordered the agency’s 6,000 agents to de-emphasize criminal investigations and focus on deporting immigrants.
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The New York Times reported in May that the Trump administration was likewise diverting about 2,000 agents from the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, as well as the U.S. Marshals toward deporting immigrants.
The FBI, ATF and U.S. Marshals are all listed in Trump’s memo as participants in the Memphis task force. What this means is that multiple federal agencies which are surging personnel into Memphis are now treating deportations of immigrants as a top priority — even if the immigrants have no criminal record.
As the task force begins operations, immigration arrests won’t be the sideshow.
They could very well turn out to be the main event.
In Washington, D.C., where Trump is currently leading another military intervention, The Associated Press analyzed arrests and concluded that, more than anything else, the feds were arresting immigrants.
Immigration arrests accounted for more than 40 percent of the arrests that The AP analyzed, or 943 people, far more than any other arrest category, such as drugs — 295 arrests — and warrants — 214 arrests.
“The federal takeover has been a cover to do federal immigration enforcement,” Austin Rose, a managing attorney at Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, an advocacy group, was quoted as saying. “It became pretty clear early on that this was a major campaign of immigration enforcement.”
Trump himself signaled the real purpose of his federal crackdowns in cities when he threatened the city of Chicago with a post on his social media site last month.
“‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning . . . ’ Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR,” the post said, accompanied by images of helicopters and an image referencing the war movie “Apocalypse Now.”
ICE agents have made numerous arrests in Memphis in recent months, including at the Memphis Immigration Court, seizing people who are trying to follow immigration law and have simply shown up for a hearing.
Memphis immigration attorney Andrew Rankin told me that in June, he was at the immigration court when he witnessed masked agents arrest a mother and a young girl.
He said he didn’t know the immigrants, who appeared to be Indigenous people from Guatemala. He watched in horror as the agents bound their hands and led them away.
He said he lost his temper and followed the officers, shouting and berating them.
“I said, ‘Is this your national security picture, arresting a 10-year-old?’ They didn’t answer me. So I took off after them, and I saw one of them was wearing a ring, signifying he’s married. I said, ‘Do you go home and tell your wife what a good job you did today arresting a 10-year-old?’”
He said the event left him rattled.
“The next night, I had a nightmare about it, full candid. I couldn’t shake that girl’s face. I couldn’t shake it. Her screams. I woke up to her screaming, because when they put the zip tie on her, she had her hands behind her back,” he said.
“She couldn’t hug her mom, and her mom was in handcuffs, like the actual … steel handcuffs.”
Some of you reading this might take issue with what I’m saying.
You might ask, “Why should we tolerate illegal immigration? What’s wrong with enforcing the law? Don’t you believe in the rule of law?”
I’m sympathetic to the idea of making fair rules and enforcing them. But let me explain where I’m coming from.
I have been writing about immigration to Memphis and the South on and off for more than 20 years. I spent years writing a nonfiction book about immigration.
I have come to see immigration as a complex phenomenon that is neither good nor bad.
I have frequently advocated for the education of immigrants’ children and for human rights, but in all the time that I have been writing and speaking about immigration, I have never advocated for large-scale, unchecked immigration.
I believe our government should create reasonable immigration laws and enforce them fairly while treating immigrants with dignity.
What Trump is doing today is the opposite of setting reasonable rules, enforcing them fairly, and treating immigrants with dignity — it’s a campaign of punishment based on irrational fears, lies and ethnic hatred.
Trump’s actions against immigrants are the opposite of the rule of law.
Context Matters
Context matters. As the Memphis Safe Task Force starts, it’s important to remember that Trump has shown a disturbing willingness to use the force of the government against his enemies.
Among Trump’s biggest enemies: immigrants.
He’s been lying about immigrants for years, spinning wild tales of bloodthristy foreigners.
Researchers have consistently concluded that immigrants — including people living in the U.S. illegally — less likely than citizens to commit crimes.
More than 70 percent of people in immigration detention today have no criminal conviction, according to the Transactional Access Research Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
True or not, far too many people have bought into Trump’s wild lies about immigrant criminals. That buy-in has helped lead to the insane moment we find ourselves in today — where even some U.S. citizens fear an ICE arrest, and the U.S. president openly threatens war against Americans.
What we can do
Given the recent fatal shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas, I want to make one thing clear: I condemn all acts of violence against ICE or against any other law enforcement agency, I condemn acts of violence against the National Guard, and I condemn all other forms of political violence. Such violence is counterproductive and morally wrong.
But our democracy affords us many peaceful ways to make a difference, and some people in Memphis are already speaking out. At the “Free The 901” rally in downtown on Saturday, many people spoke against Trump’s intervention, and several made statements or held signs opposing ICE.
Celia Mason, 57, carried a sign that said, “Stop Kidnapping Immigrants.”
“I came out today because I am not comfortable with the way that ICE is approaching citizens, assuming that they’re illegal because of the way they look, or their occupation,” she told me. “I don’t feel like Memphis needs troops here, or more force visibility here.”
You can help too.
First and foremost, contact all your elected officials: your City Council members, your County Commission members, your school board members, the mayors, your members of Congress. Tell them that you do not want them to cooperate with Trump’s task force.
Second, donate funds to the various organizations that are fighting for justice and working to defend our neighbors. This includes the ACLU, Advocates for Immigrant Rights, MICAH, the NAACP, Latino Memphis and many others.
Third, stay informed by following news about what ICE is doing. The Facebook page of Vecindarios901, a group of volunteers that follows secretive ICE arrests, is a good place to start.
Fourth, if you ever witness an ICE arrest or similar action in Memphis, try to record a video of it, if you can do so safely. Then upload the video to social media or send it to your favorite news outlet.
ICE is an agency that thrives on secrecy. If enough people are watching and witnessing, ICE agents are less likely to conduct excessive force or other human rights violations.
If anyone you know is arrested or detained, try to help them hire a lawyer and complain on their behalf.
We don’t know exactly what members of the Memphis Safe Task Force will do over the next few months. But we do know that Trump seeks to target some of the most vulnerable people among us. It’s time to help one another.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Institute for Public Service Reporting.
