Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris said Tuesday his office is weighing legal action to stop “unconstitutional actions” of the Memphis Safe Task Force against the county’s Latino community.
Leaders said residents are getting stopped by law enforcement officials for “the way you look” with long traffic stops that can end with officers refusing to give back identification cards, like driver’s licenses. Some have been taken to 201 Poplar on hold for ICE and later sent to immigration detention centers for hearings.
Harris said, based on the task force data they’ve seen, most of the arrests made here so far have been on outstanding criminal warrants. The second are related to immigration violations.
In a news conference Tuesday, leaders said they worried those immigration arrests here begin with stops based on racial profiling.
Harris said one Shelby County employee was pulled over by the task force for no reason. He was made to produce his identification papers and was later let go. The employee was given no reason for why he was pulled over and could only guess that it was because he looked Latino.
Colton Bane, program director of Community Legal Center Immigrant Justice (CLCIJ), said one client was pulled over by the Tennessee Highway Patrol and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He provided his driver’s license, work permit, and Social Security card. The officers reviewed his documents but refused to return the man’s driver’s license. When Bane, his attorney, showed up, they returned the card and let the man go.
It’s a story Bane said he’s heard many times so far. Also, he said, people’s cars are being towed by the task force because, while they have their license, they did not have the license on their person during the stop. All of it, Bane said, indicates the task force is clearly racially profiling and that they are creating future legal problems for these people.
“This is where the [idea that] if you’re doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about — that argument completely falls flat,” Bane said.
All of it, leaders said Tuesday, is having a chilling effect on the Shelby County Latino community, as they fear harassment and detention for simply looking Latino.
Carlos Ochoa, organizer of Vecindarios 901, said armed federal and state agents swooped into the usually busy Marion Hale Community Center in Willow Park “a couple of Sundays ago.” People fled, he said, and ICE left without an arrest.
“It seemed like their intention was to scare our communities,” Ochoa said in a news conference Tuesday. “Now, the empty bleachers this past Sunday [at Willow Park] are a testament to the fear that is gripping our people and our community.
“This is not the Memphis we know this is not the Shelby County we know. This is not the country we want.”
Fear of ICE and the task force in general are keeping Latino members of the Shelby County community in their homes, away from work, church, stores, social gatherings, and even away from medical appointments.
“As you suppress activity, obviously you may see some incidental crime recursion as a result of that, but that’s just because people are in paralysis,” Harris said.
Asked what members of the immigrant community should do in Shelby County if they are pulled over, Harris said, “I think a lot of folks are going to have to walk around with their papers.”