The Nashville ICE Raids: Anti-Gang Offensive or Immigration Crackdown?
On the night of May 4, the phones and social media of migrant rights activists in Nashville lit up with alerts, some with shaky cell phone videos all showing similar scenes: the multilane transport arteries that slice through south Nashville’s immigrant districts illuminated by the flashing red and blue of state trooper vehicles and the fuzzy yellow glow from the headlights of unmarked cars. Men in khaki shirts and wide-brimmed hats approached cars, while murky figures in tactical vests lurked over their shoulders in the distance.
The pattern soon became clear: Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) were pulling people over, then Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were detaining them. The 150 stops they made that night were part of a “public safety operation,” the THP said, targeting “areas with a history of serious traffic crashes and suspected gang activity.”
The sweep was part of a national effort to deliver on the campaign promise of President Donald Trump to launch “the largest deportation campaign in history.” That campaign, Trump claimed, would prioritize violent criminals and organized crime: drug traffickers, sex traffickers, and gangs with roots in Latin America.
The administration has called it the “worst first” strategy. And among their leading targets were the legendary Los Angeles-born Mara Salvatrucha, or MS13, and Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan prison gang that has spread throughout the Americas by preying on the exodus of people fleeing poverty, insecurity, and political oppression in Venezuela.
https://insightcrime.org/investigations/nashville-ice-raids-anti-gang-offensive-or-immigration-crackdown/
https://insightcrime.org/investigations/tren-de-aragua-tennessee-ghost-train/
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