The Memphis Safe Task Force has been operating in Memphis for about a year. In that time, it has made more than 12,000 arrests, launching thousands of local criminal cases and more than 400 federal criminal cases.
President Donald Trump created the Memphis Safe Task Force through a Sept. 15, 2025 executive order
. By Oct. 1 that year, thousands of additional federal agents had touched down in Memphis and started operations."President Trump's Memphis Safe Task Force has driven down violent crime in a city that was failed by extreme Democrats' soft-on-crime policies," said Lauren Bis, a White House spokeswoman, in a Sept. 15 press release commemorating the executive order's signing. "The Task Force has made more than 12,000 arrests including of murderers,
sex offenders, drug traffickers, and other violent criminals and has seized more than 2,100 illegal firearms. President Trump restored law and order and made Memphis safe again."
Of the more than 12,000 arrests, though, it is not exactly clear how many people were arrested for violent crimes. Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy told the Commercial Appeal in an interview the vast majority of arrests were nonviolent and minor offenses.
Crime in Memphis steadily rose for about eight years, starting in 2016 and peaking in 2023. Over the last three years, crime has plummeted from that peak, and law enforcement officials from all walks of life — including Task Force officials — have acknowledged the decline in crime cannot solely be attributed to the efforts of the Task Force.
The U.S. Marshals Service was tasked with leading the task force, which is made up of at least 30 federal organizations from eight different federal departments. The main organizations seen throughout Memphis have been the FBI, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Border Patrol, Drug Enforcement Administration, and the National Guard.
Local law enforcement has also been a key instrument in the Task Force, prominently featuring the Tennessee Highway Patrol alongside the Memphis Police Department and Shelby County Sheriff's Office.
Republican lawmakers have scrutinized the Shelby County DA's Office's handling of Task Force cases, requiring additional reporting when a case ends in a plea agreement or dismissal.
Six months into the Task Force operating in Memphis, the CA spoke with U.S. Attorney Mike Dunavant for the Western District of Tennessee, who said he would charge as many state defendants with federal charges as he could.
But the same scrutiny Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy's office has received had not been applied to federal prosecutions. Earlier this year, the CA started tracking every criminal case filed through the federal court's public case filing system.
A review of those records showed 407 criminal cases being filed between Oct. 1, 2025 and Aug. 31, 2026. Just under half of those cases have been completed, and the vast majority of completed cases, around 74.5% of them, ended in a plea agreement. Nearly a quarter of cases, 22.5%, ended in the case being dismissed.
Only 3% of federal cases went to trial, data reviewed by the CA found. Half of those trials ended with the defendant being acquitted.
As part of the one-year retrospective, the CA also questioned when the Task Force could leave Memphis, whether the quality of prosecutions dropped with the quantity of cases being brought, and examined ICE's seemingly bizarre role within the Task Force.
Here's what happened to Memphis Safe Task Force cases in federal court
When the task force arrived, U.S. Attorney Mike Dunavant for the Western District of Tennessee said he wanted to bring as many criminal cases into federal court as he possibly could. Since October 2025, his office has filed over 400 criminal cases. Here's what happened to those cases.
When will the Memphis Safe Task Force leave?
Trump created the Memphis Safe Task Force without a clear end date. After a year of operations in Memphis, the CA asked officials when the surge of federal agents could come to an end.
Officials from Trump's Task Force and local leaders distance themselves from ICE
Immigration enforcement has made up part of the Memphis Safe Task Force's operations in the Bluff City. Local officials distanced themselves from immigration enforcement early on, and now Task Force officials are distancing themselves from it.
Has the increase in arrests created a quality issue in federal prosecutions?
With more than 400 criminal cases filed in federal court, prosecutors are handling more cases. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Tennessee was given extra attorneys, but are they sacrificing prosecutorial quality for quantity of arrests?
This story will be updated as additional stories about the Task Force are published.
Lucas Finton covers crime, policing, jails, the courts and criminal justice policy for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached by phone or email: (901)208-3922 and Lucas.Finton@commercialappeal.com, and followed on X @LucasFinton.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: The CA analyzed data from 1 year of Memphis Safe Task Force. See stories
