Mayor Young tells Hispanic leaders MPD is working with ICE

This story was originally published by The Institute for Public Service Reporting. 

Mayor Paul Young confirmed late Monday in a contentious town hall meeting with Hispanic residents that the Memphis Police Department is cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

His statements before a crowd of hundreds in East Memphis came as a remarkable development considering that city leaders for years had denied any collaboration between the police force and ICE.

Young said his aim in allowing the cooperation was to steer federal agents away from mass deportation and toward helping MPD investigate murders and other violent crimes.

If he fought the administration of President Donald Trump, as officials in Chicago are doing, the federal government would respond with even harsher tactics, he said.

“I believe that the posture of Chicago has caused the federal government to flood the community with ICE agents focused on immigration,” Young said, drawing occasional applause. “That is why I have chosen to make sure that our police department is working with the federal teams to direct them towards our problem, which is crime.”

But the mayor received sharp pushback from some in the crowd at Mullins United Methodist Church where a big group of mostly Hispanic residents turned out to hear Young speak alongside Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis.

“This morning, they took away a mother. The mother left behind a 1-year-old child,” Maria Alejandra Oceja said in Spanish. A key leader of community group Vecindarios901, Oceja said it’s one of many similar cases of parents arrested and children left behind.

At another point, a woman shouted at the mayor from the back of the church. “Should we wait until all of our family members get taken away?”

Some audience members argued that federal agents here are already using racial profiling and other heavy-handed tactics against non-criminal Hispanics.

President Trump and Gov. Bill Lee have sent more than 1,000 federal agents, state troopers, and National Guard members into Memphis since late September in an anti-crime initiative known as the Memphis Safe Task Force. They have made hundreds of arrests, including numerous immigration arrests. Full arrest data is not available.

But Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, who attended the Monday night meeting, told the Institute for Public Service Reporting that he has been receiving regular reports from the task force.

“I think people expected it to be about crime. And even on immigration — immigrants who are criminals — that’s not what we’re seeing,” Mulroy said.

About 20 percent of the arrests are immigration-related, he said. What proportion of those involve immigrants accused of committing crimes?

“I don’t know precisely, but not many,’’ Mulroy said. “There doesn’t seem to be any indication of reports of criminal activity other than unlawful presence in the United States.”

Entry into the country without inspection can be charged as a crime, yet unlawful presence in the United States is generally treated as a civil immigration offense, not a crime.

For decades, federal immigration enforcement was rare in non-border areas like Memphis. Previous Democratic and Republican administrations had focused on deportations of immigrants who had been arrested or convicted of other crimes in the U.S., such as driving under the influence, drug dealing or murder.

The light federal enforcement in non-border areas meant that most unauthorized immigrants in Memphis managed to live normal lives: working in construction and other industries and frequently buying homes, sending children to school and sometimes launching their own businesses.

Today, the situation has changed dramatically. The Trump administration and Congress are dedicating billions of dollars toward large-scale deportation, regardless of the immigrants’ criminal records.

Seventy-two percent of immigrants in detention centers today have no criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Access Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Photos raise questions

The community meeting was led by several local Hispanic pastors and Vecinarios901, or V901, an organization that tracks ICE activities in the city and posts real-time updates on Facebook. (The wife of the author of this article volunteers with V901.)

Early in the meeting, with the mayor and police chief sitting on stage just a few feet away, V901 leader Oceja said before the law enforcement surge began, the organization received only three to five reports of federal activity per day.

Since feds and state troopers began operating on Sept. 29, the count has exploded to more than 500 reports per week, Oceja said.

She used a projector and a screen to show the audience what she said were pictures of ICE and MPD working together during the ongoing law enforcement surge.

“In this image, you can see an HSI officer in the passenger seat of an MPD vehicle with an MPD officer,” she said. HSI stands for Homeland Security Investigations. The agency is part of ICE, and President Trump this year shifted its focus from criminal investigations to mass deportations.

“And in the other image, you can see the HSI officer who was trailing these MPD vehicles as well,” Oceja said.

Moments later, Mayor Young addressed the audience, confirming that MPD is working with ICE.

“My strategy has been and continues to be to keep this task force focused on violent crime as opposed to immigration,” Young said.

“What has happened here is we have 13 federal agencies (in the task force), and ICE is one of them. However, their charge is to focus on violent crime, and so the busier we can keep them with MPD, the less time they will have to focus on immigration.”

His confirmation of collaboration came as a departure from statements of past Memphis leaders.

As immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America began arriving in Memphis in the 1990s and as armed robbers began to target them, the police department began a steady public relations campaign to reassure immigrants that they didn’t check people’s immigration status.

Police urged immigrants to report crimes, serve as witnesses and help solve robberies, domestic violence and other crimes involving the Hispanic community.

Young didn’t say precisely when the collaboration between MPD and ICE began. But in response to a question, he said MPD’s cooperation with ICE didn’t involve traffic stops, which have become one of the more controversial tactics used by the task force.

“The traffic stops that you’re seeing are happening with Tennessee Highway Patrol,’’ Young said, emphasizing the federal agents are working with special units within MPD to focus on serious crime. “That’s why we have begun to get this task force ingrained into our Organized Crime Unit, our Multi-Agency Gang Unit. We have to focus on homicides, increasing our clearance rate, so we can solve some of the real violent crimes that are happening in our cities. When they (federal agents) don’t have those things to do, they ride around pulling people over.”

As ICE and Border Patrol vehicles patrol Memphis streets, videos and stories of traffic-stop arrests by masked agents are spreading online. Some immigrants are carrying passports and other documents, fearful of frequent traffic stops and a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that effectively allows racial profiling.

Others are avoiding going to work or shopping altogether, hiding in their homes. Some are running out of food, leaders of an immigrant food pantry have said. Meanwhile, some businesses are reporting dramatic drops in clientele.

“They’re killing the businesses,” Francisco Rocha, a principal with Nortenos Tortilleria, a tortilla maker, told a reporter after the meeting. Speaking in Spanish, Rocha said that since the federal sweeps began a few weeks ago, customer demand has dropped off, and his business has been forced to reduce its working time from five days a week to three.

In response to an audience question, Young acknowledged the extreme fear.

“I certainly agree that the fear — the terror — that is present in the Hispanic community. It’s not a good thing for our city,” Young said, emphasizing that he wants “quality arrests” over quantity.

“The Hispanic population has been the fastest-growing population in Memphis for the last five years. I want that to continue. Which is why our team is doing all that we can to push that task force to focus on something other than immigration. We do not have an immigration issue in Memphis. We have a crime problem.”

Tense moments

Sandra Pita, an activist with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, told the audience that her own daughter had recently been stopped by a Shelby County Sheriff’s deputy.

About 10 minutes later, Border Patrol agents showed up, examined her daughter’s paperwork, and let her go, Pita told a reporter later. She said her daughter, who was born in the United States, was driving 45 miles per hour in a 40 miles per hour zone, and the deputy let her go with a warning.

Pita told the audience she thought the traffic stop was a clear case of racial profiling against Hispanics – and added that her daughter had voted for Young.

Young responded that he’s constantly asking the task force to focus on violent crime, and he said he’s asked about allegations that law enforcement is targeting immigrants in traffic stops.

“I ask them specifically, ‘Is it racial profiling?’ Their response is that ‘We’re making valid traffic stops.’

The audience began to murmur. A woman shouted, “You’re being ignorant on purpose!”

“Who’s being ignorant by asking a question and telling you a response that doesn’t make sense?” Young responded.

“It’s not being ignorant,” Young continued. “I’m not saying it’s not happening. I’m explaining what is said when I bring the concern to the people that are responsible.”

“I understand the frustration in the room,” he continued. “I’m frustrated, but I have a responsibility to stay at the table, to try and navigate us. Because I promise you, if you walk away from the table, it will be worse.”

Another audience question came from Miguel Angel Valdez with Spanish-language news outlet MSV Noticias.

With ICE agents and other federal authorities frequently wearing masks, Valdez asked what he should do if masked people appear outside his house with guns, refuse to identify themselves, and refuse to show a warrant.

He asked if he called 911, would Memphis police come and help him?

After some back-and-forth, Davis said yes, they would.

“And if there’s some confusion, if you call 911, we’re coming,” Davis said. “And we’re going to help to determine whether or not that individual is legitimate or not.”

“We did that just recently at a food truck. A call came in, a 911 call came in. People weren’t identified. Our officers went to that scene to make sure that that person wasn’t getting kidnapped,” Davis said.

One audience member asked how long the current situation would last.

Young responded that he doesn’t know.

“But I will tell you how it happened in DC. The surge . . . lasted 35 days. So, we expect that this surge will last somewhere between 35 to 45 days.”

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