Six months ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) came to Nashville, enlisting the Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) in a sweeping, weeklong immigration sting. For six nights, troopers combed predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods in South Nashville, interacting with more than 600 vehicles and facilitating the arrests of 196 people.
The Nashville Banner inspected more than 1,700 pages of incident reports, which detail the traffic stops conducted by THP in Davidson County across six shifts by an unknown number of troopers assigned to the operation.
The brief and heavily redacted reports vary in detail. Still, they paint a picture of rapid-fire traffic stops, sometimes only seconds apart, with few actual traffic citations or arrests and a steep drop-off after the first night of the sting, which accounted for about one quarter of the total stops.
Of the 607 reports, only approximately 14 percent provided a reason for the initial traffic stop, most often citing a non-moving violation, such as window tints, light laws or improperly displayed tags. In several speeding cases, it appears from the reports that the trooper allowed the vehicle to drive away without pursuit.
Several THP officials ignored repeated questions about interpreting the reports, redaction of typically public information and the operation itself. A regional spokesperson for ICE, who handled the operation in May, did not respond to questions either.