Nearly six of every ten ICE arrests in Tennessee since President Donald Trump took office involve individuals with no criminal convictions, an analysis of newly released government data shows.
Among 5,667 ICE arrests since Jan. 20 in Tennessee, 3,364 or 59 percent involve individuals without convictions. Additionally, 1,144 of those arrests — one in every five — were of individuals who were neither convicted of a crime nor had any pending criminal charges.
The analysis by the Institute for Public Service Reporting also found that 77 percent of ICE arrests listed as taking place in Shelby County since Trump took office involve people with no criminal convictions. However, limitations in location data make that finding less certain.
Critics say the data maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement provides a resounding rebuttal to the Trump administration’s narrative that its mass deportation effort is aimed at hardcore criminals — “the worst of the worst.”
“The Trump administration’s claim that they’re going after the so-called worst of the worst is simply a lie,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School. “People are being arrested every day … when they’re complying with their immigration check-ins, when they’re complying with their immigration court requirements, when they are doing everything that they’re supposed to do.”
The Institute’s analysis involved records that ICE provided to the Deportation Data Project in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The Deportation Data Project is a repository of immigration enforcement records published by a team of academics and lawyers, many of whom work at the University of California.
The project’s administrators obtain records from ICE on a rolling basis as new arrest data is collected. They then publish updates on the project’s website. The new tranche of data published last week includes all ICE arrests made this year through October 15.
The Institute’s review of the data found ICE is not just arresting adult immigrants. It has arrested more than 50 children in Tennessee since Jan. 20. At least 22 of them were under the age of 10.
“It’s important that people look at the data to understand who is actually being targeted,” said Mukherjee, who is also a faculty fellow at the Deportation Data Project.
Sharp spike in arrests
Since Trump took office in January, ICE has made an average of 21 arrests per day in Tennessee.
The rate of ICE arrests in the Volunteer State spiked to its highest level this year in October, coinciding with the surge in federal agents in Memphis as part of the Memphis Safe Task Force that began operations on September 29.
The number of arrests rose to almost 35 arrests per day in October. In the first 15 days of that month there were 522 arrests, the highest number for the first 15 days of any month this year.
Trump launched the Memphis Safe Task Force by deploying hundreds of federal agents into the city accompanied by state troopers and National Guard personnel.
The task force has a dual mission of reducing violent crime and enforcing immigration law. In the first 17 days of the task force’s operations, there were 587 ICE arrests statewide. Meanwhile, the rate of ICE arrests in Shelby County increased drastically since the task force began operations on September 29, with at least 65 arrests in the first 17 days. The data does not include arrests that ICE or the task force has made of U.S. citizens.
Mauricio Calvo, president of Latino Memphis, an advocacy organization that works extensively with immigrants, told The Institute, “It makes you wonder what is going to be the impact not only on these individuals, but on everybody that is directly or indirectly connected to them, whether they’re their family members, their employers, their landlords, their customers. This is a huge blow not only to this group of people but to us as a country.”
The data does not provide a breakdown of arrests by city. However, estimates can be made. The data includes a field named ‘apprehension site landmark’, which lists either an actual location or an ICE office located in a given city. There are eight such locations in the database which fall within Shelby County. In all, 592 ICE arrests since 20 January are associated with those locations.
The actual number of ICE arrests in Shelby County — and the percentage of arrestees with criminal convictions — could be higher, however. That’s because a number of arrests are not ascribed to any particular location. For instance, there were nearly 500 ICE arrests statewide this year with an ‘apprehension site landmark’ designated as ‘Fugitive operations TN State’.
Overall, The Institute’s analysis of the immigration enforcement data found:
- Among 5,667 ICE arrests in Tennessee since Jan. 20, 3,364 arrests or 59 percent involved individuals without convictions. Additionally, 1,144 of those arrests — one in every five — were of individuals who were neither convicted of a crime nor had any pending criminal charges.
- About 63 percent of the nearly 221,000 arrests by ICE across the U.S. since Trump took office involved individuals with no criminal conviction.
Arrests of children
Since Trump took office, there have been more than 50 arrests by ICE of children under the age of 18 in Tennessee. At least 22 of them were under the age of 10.
The youngest involved two children less than four years of age.
Among 52 ICE arrests statewide of persons under 18 years of age, 38 were listed as having taken place in Shelby County.
ICE has sent more immigrant children into the federal shelter system this year than in the previous four years combined, per a ProPublica reportpublished in November. According to the report, in a majority of the cases that ProPublica examined, “kids ended up in shelters in ways government officials say they never would have in the past: after routine immigration court hearings or appointments, or because they were at a home or a business when immigration authorities showed up to arrest someone else.”
Calvo said The Institute’s findings on arrests of children by ICE in Tennessee ring true.
“We know that this is true because many of the clients that Latino Memphis represents have received visits from ICE at their homes and under the auspices of saying, ’We’re doing a child (wellness) check just to make sure that the children are okay,’” Calvo said.
Agents have used this ruse to detain the children and their family members, he said: “It is completely inhumane…and it’s really sad.”
DHS did not respond to The Institute’s request for comment.
The Institute reported in November that teams of armed federal agents have been making unannounced visits to the homes of immigrant families across Memphis inquiring about the wellbeing of children. The “wellness checks” are intended to ensure that undocumented children who entered the country without parents do not become victims of human trafficking or other forms of exploitation, government officials say. But critics say the wellness checks are a pretext to encounter and arrest as many immigrants as possible.
Most Tennessee ICE arrests are of Mexican and Guatemalan nationals
Close to six out of every ten ICE arrests in the state since Trump took office have been of Mexican and Guatemalan nationals.
Mexicans alone account for 34 percent of the arrests, and close to half of them have no criminal convictions. Of the 1,447 ICE arrests of Guatemalans, 59 percent of them were of individuals with no criminal convictions.
For arrests specified as being in Shelby County, the nationality with the highest number of arrests was Mexican (148), followed by Venezuelan (106) and Guatemalan (104).
Critics say the new data sharply conflicts with the Trump administration’s repeated statements.
In September, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement, “Ramped-up immigration enforcement targeting the worst of the worst is removing more and more criminal illegal aliens off our streets every day…”
ICE’s own data, of arrests in Tennessee and the rest of the country, belies that claim, Calvo said.
“The data proves that the narrative that the government has provided is false,” said Calvo. “And then it makes you wonder — what is the motive? Is it racism against a specific group of people, is it a distraction, is it just scapegoating a group of people instead of finding real solutions?”
Editor’s Note: Latino Memphis made a $10,000 gift to the Institute for Public Service Reporting in November. The Institute maintains a firewall between editorial decisions and all sources of revenue. Acceptance of support does not give donors any control over our editorial product; neither does it constitute any implied or actual endorsement of donors or their products, services or opinions. For more details see our editorial independence policy.