To wage the ongoing mass deportation campaign — a ruthless federal operation terrorizing both Latino Americans with legal status and undocumented immigrants — President Donald Trump’s administration has relied on cooperation from local law enforcement.
This has primarily come in the form of 287(g) agreements made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, with sheriffs’ offices. The program, which local law enforcement agencies typically enter willingly, allows sheriffs and deputies to enforce immigration law on behalf of ICE.
Hamilton County Sheriff Austin Garrett, proving himself servile to the Trump administration’s draconian anti-immigrant agenda, has voluntarily collaborated with ICE. From January to October of last year, local agencies detained over 500 immigrants in Hamilton County, and a majority of those were transferred to ICE for potential deportation.
And now, every county in the state is forced to comply with federal immigration authorities. The Tennessee statehouse’s GOP supermajority passed a law this spring mandating every sheriff’s office collaborate with ICE via the 287(g) program.
While ICE’s viral display of brute tactics in cities like Chicago and Minneapolis generate headlines, it is this kind of collaborative and institutional deportation in Tennessee and other Republican-led states that is driving the mass exodus of Latino immigrants from this country.