The anti-crime push in Memphis is also an immigration operation

0:00It's Consider This where every day we go deep on one big news story. Today, how the Trump administration's push to reduce violent crime in one city has led to a surge in immigration enforcement. Take the case of 18-year-old Yasser Lopez, who was arrested by federal immigration officers in February. Me preguntaba de que había sido lo malo que había cometido. At first, Lopez wondered what he'd done wrong. Pero me empecé a acordar de como han estado pasando las situaciones aquí. Then it dawned on him. This was just the new normal here. Here is Memphis, Tennessee. Last September, President Trump announced the creation of the Memphis Safe Task Force to Fight Violent Crime and called for the deployment of the Tennessee National Guard to support that effort.

0:46In 2024, Memphis had the highest violent crime rate, the highest property crime rate, and the third highest murder rate of any city in the nation. Other than that, They're doing quite well, thank you. Federal and local officials didn't mention immigration enforcement as a goal, and yet Yasser Lopez understood it was happening all around Memphis. He told NPR's Kat Lonsdorf that he was brought to the U.S. as a child from Nicaragua. He has no criminal convictions, but on his way to a high school soccer game, the car he was riding in was stopped by officers working with the Memphis Safe Task Force.

1:23He was arrested and sent to a detention center. Hundreds of students from his school staged a walkout in protest. Lopez was eventually released on orders from a judge and is applying for asylum. But it all left him shaken.

1:42He's worried about his family and friends because the task force is still in the city. Consider this. President Trump says he wants to replicate the Memphis task force in other cities. That task force has quietly turned into an ice crackdown.

2:01From NPR, I'm Juana Summers.

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3:16It's Consider This from NPR. The influx of federal agents into Memphis has led to widespread immigration arrests, most involving people without criminal convictions. It has created constant fear within the immigrant community in Memphis. NPR's Kat Lonsdorf picks up the story. Trump announced the Memphis Safe Task Force last fall with Tennessee Republican Governor Bill Lee standing beside him, saying it was to fight crime in the city. Memphis has historically had one of the highest crime rates in the country, but last year it hit a 25-year low. Trump called the task force a replica of the ongoing anti-crime task force in Washington, D.C.

3:53Both have had significant immigration enforcement aspects to them. All roads lead to immigration enforcement with this administration. Chioma Chukwu is the executive director at American Oversight, a nonprofit, nonpartisan watchdog that's been investigating Trump's task forces. She says one thing her organization has been tracking is the way the administration has been using an anti-crime narrative. This administration has used crime as a pretext for furthering and advancing its immigration enforcement agenda. Particularly, she says, in places where anti-crime rhetoric might resonate more. Federal and local officials have maintained that the goal of the Memphis task force is to fight crime.

4:35But immigration advocates and lawyers in the city were bracing. As soon as the announcement came out, I was really clear-eyed about what was going to be happening. Casey Bryant, executive director of Advocates for Immigrant Rights in Memphis, remembers that much of the media coverage when the task force launched was about the deployment of hundreds of Tennessee National Guard members to the city. But that felt like a distraction. It was really going to be about the federal agencies that were riding the coattails of the National Guard. Namely, immigration. During a recent visit to Memphis, NPR witnessed an immigration arrest at a home in a residential area, surrounded by at least eight local, state, and federal law enforcement vehicles and nearly two dozen officers.

5:16A handful of observers yell at the officers, holding up their cell phones to film. One man is brought from the house in handcuffs and taken away. All that show of force to get one undocumented individual. Memphis resident Hunter Dempster is filming. He's made a point of trying to document as much task force activity as possible, usually several incidents a day. It was very evident that this was an immigration operation at its core. He says despite the official narrative that this task force is focused on crime, that's not what he's witnessed. The realities of this task force is the majority of what they're doing is a mass pullover operation centered in the two largest Hispanic neighborhoods in the city.

5:57The U.S. Marshals Service, which leads the task force in Memphis, denies that, telling NPR that no one is being targeted. The White House didn't respond to a pointed question about the immigration enforcement activity in Memphis, instead saying the task force has, quote, yielded tremendous results without providing evidence. The first few months of the task force brought hundreds of immigration arrests, a six-fold increase from previous months, according to an analysis by the Institute for Public Service Reporting in Memphis. A vast majority of those arrested did not have criminal convictions.

6:27Those first few months, they were insane. Maria Oceja is a co-founder of Vecindarios 901, a local rapid response network that's been tracking ICE activity since the task force was deployed. We're out walking her dog around one of the main immigrant neighborhoods in the city, looking for ICE activity, something she's been doing regularly. Oseha's organization runs a hotline where people can call and report immigration activity. She says those first months, the hotline was so flooded with calls, they needed four people to staff it all through the night. We weren't sleeping. It was a really, really traumatic time for our community.

7:02She points to the day the task force first launched, when Stephen Miller, the chief architect for the White House immigration agenda, visited Memphis along with other members of the administration and told assembled law enforcement officers. This isn't just a task force. This is a all of government unlimited support operation. He said you are unleashed. That's when we knew we were like, yeah, this has nothing to do with crime. They're here to push this anti-immigrant agenda. She's been talking with other immigration advocates about how this task force feels like a test case. Memphis is definitely like the experiment, the blueprint.

7:37Trump has said he has plans for similar task forces elsewhere, particularly in Republican-led states where he has more political buy-in. During a visit in the city in March, Trump sat at a table with Governor Lee, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Stephen Miller, and declared the task force a success, saying crime had been, quote, fixed in the city. Memphis Mayor Paul Young, a Democrat, was not at that table. At a later press conference, Young was asked directly about the high immigration arrests. He said that was out of his control. There's no mayor in America that can control the immigration aspects of this.

8:11Despite Trump's claims of its success, the federal task force in Memphis does not have a set end date. And many in the immigrant community are still struggling, afraid to leave their homes amid the increased federal presence. Amber Hampton runs a makeshift community food pantry for immigrant families out of her garage in a suburb of the city. She's putting together boxes of groceries and toiletries for volunteers to deliver. Demand, she says, shot up the day the task force started. It was huge and immediate. She says when the federal immigration raids in Minneapolis were happening in January, she remembered thinking it was really similar to what was happening here in Memphis, except without nearly as much attention.

8:51Partially, she thinks because the anti-crime narrative was so strong. But she does think perception is slowly changing. I think as more stories are coming out, people are realizing that what is happening on the ground is not what they were sold. Ronnie Davis is one of those people. He works at a barbershop in a neighborhood that regularly sees a lot of violence. When NPR talked to him 10 months ago, he was cautiously optimistic that maybe the task force would help. Now he says he's worried about its impact on immigrants in the city. I thought we were going after criminals. We're going after people who just want to come to America and live the basic normal life.

9:29He says he has felt safer, largely because of the increased law enforcement presence. But he says if he was an immigrant... I'd be terrified. My Hispanic brothers and sisters, I don't think they should go through that. He thinks his feelings of safety shouldn't come at the expense of other members of the community. Kat Lonsdorf, NPR News, Memphis. This episode was produced by Kai McNamee and Alejandra Marquez-Honse. Our director is Jonas Adams. The episode was edited by Alina Hartunian and Patrick Jarenwatananen. Our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Summers.

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