U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested 121 people who were in the country illegally during an Aug. 30 immigration raid, according to a Sept. 1 statement released from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
DHS described the incident as a "multiagency targeted enforcement operation," during which federal and state warrants were executed.
ICE agents raided El Corralón, a bar in the Berclair neighborhood, on Aug. 30, around 1 a.m. It was one of the largest immigration operations in at least recent Memphis history, according to advocates.
The operation was executed based on two Tennessee Bureau of Investigation warrants — one related to illegal gambling and another related to drugs, said Casey Bryant, an immigration attorney and the executive
director for Advocates for Immigrant Rights.
DHS said the operation resulted in the arrests of people with criminal histories, but it's unclear how many people, if any, were arrested on charges of illegal gambling or drug activity, Bryant said. The people who were arrested at the scene were booked through the ICE office in Memphis and not through the Memphis Police Department.
"I feel like it's pretty dubious that these search warrants were really part of an active criminal investigation, considering that the law enforcement officers who were part of the safe task force rolled up with vans ready to load people up," Bryant said. "That's nothing that we see in a criminal investigation. That's what we see in an immigration raid."
Bryant said some detainees were told to sign voluntary departure orders. Many detainees were taken to the ICE facility in Mason, Tennessee.
Vecindarios901, an immigrant advocacy organization that fields calls from Memphis-area residents about ICE activity in Shelby County, has identified around 90 of the people detained in the operation, said the organization's co-founder Hunter Demster.
Jack Armstrong covers breaking news and the environment for The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at jack.armstrong@commercialappeal.com and followed on X @jca2902.
This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: ICE agents arrested more than 120 during Memphis immigration raid
