WALKER COUNTY, Ga. — The Tennessee-Georgia line, where Rossville Boulevard becomes Chickamauga Avenue, has become a risky section of pavement for people who are in the country without legal authorization.
That’s at least in part because of one Georgia State Patrol trooper, Cpl. Emilee Shackleford, who covers Dade and Walker counties along with about six other troopers. The Chattanooga Times Free Press analyzed 2025 citation and arrest data from seven officers based at the state patrol post in LaFayette, Georgia.
In 2025, those officers arrested 28 people in Walker County who ended up in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.
Shackleford made 78% of those arrests.
Twenty-one of Shackleford’s 22 arrests that ended with people in ICE custody took place within 1.5 miles of the Tennessee-Georgia border. All but three included charges of driving without a valid license, eight of which followed stops at driver’s license checkpoints, according to the data and citation reports obtained through open records requests.