Nashville immigrants were terrified to leave home during the weeklong joint operation carried out by federal immigration enforcement and Tennessee state troopers in early May. ICE and the Tennessee Highway Patrol detained almost 200 drivers, most of whom had no criminal history. Even Broadway bars were affected — including those owned by staunch conservative Steve Smith — as employees stayed in place to avoid a raid.
While the traffic sweeps may be over, threats to the stability of immigrant families haven’t vanished. The week after ICE concluded its operation, local lawyers noticed a spike in illegal evictions of Hispanic immigrant families, and the message from landlords to their tenants is clear: If you refuse to leave, we’ll call ICE.
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Anne Boatner, legal director of the Hispanic Bar Association, says her organization heard of at least four illegal evictions in a single week — all immigrant families — outpacing the usual rate of one every three months. Boatner adds that she has never seen an eviction so blatantly based on immigration status before this wave, and suspects there are more instances around the city than those brought to her organization.
“Our tenants are essentially facing eviction or deportation,” says Boatner, who also oversees the Eviction Right to Counsel, a collaboration between the Hispanic Bar Association and other local organizations. The landlords in these instances own only a few properties.
Tennessee law is clear about illegal evictions: Landlords need to go through the courts before serving eviction notices, and only the sheriff’s department can physically remove a tenant and their belongings from a property. But tenants fear a lawsuit could put them on ICE’s radar.
“The frustrating thing is that these cases are so winnable,” says Boatner. But since it may not be safe for tenants to go to court, Boatner and her colleagues are looking for alternative ways to hold landlords accountable, like determining whether they’re violating fair housing laws or mismanaging the property.
One tenant, speaking to the Scene anonymously due to fear of retaliation, says her landlord called her on a Tuesday and asked if she and her husband had legal status. She told him they did not, and says he knew that when he originally started renting to them years ago. She says the landlord then told her that she, her husband and their two young children had until Sunday to move out. The landlord did not provide a physical eviction notice, and the family had renewed the lease in January. The landlord threatened to call ICE if they didn’t leave, she says. (The landlord’s identity is also being withheld to preserve anonymity of the tenant.)
The family is staying with friends for now. But between the recent ICE operation and her own eviction, the tenant admits she’s afraid.
“I feel helpless, upset, and it’s unfair that just because we don’t have legal status, we have to be so vulnerable,” she says in Spanish.
The tenant says she would like to pursue a lawsuit against the landlord for the eviction.
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A recent slate of aggressive anti-immigrant legislation may also contribute to the illegal evictions. One landlord, says Boatner, referenced a new state law that makes it a misdemeanor to “harbor” undocumented immigrants. Boatner calls it “a pretty gross misunderstanding” of the law, and that it doesn’t require landlords to check the immigration status of tenants.
Since Boatner and her colleagues can’t pursue lawsuits right away, they’ve had to help clients in other ways, seeking assistance from community partners to help rehouse them.
Metro Councilmember Ginny Welsch of District 16 is one of those partners. Boatner informed Welsch about an immigrant couple in her district who had been illegally evicted, and the councilmember helped them secure a free motel room for a week. Welsch says the couple’s apartment was in poor condition, and that they were likely being overcharged before their eviction — and the landlord will probably continue to overcharge on the unit.
“These landlords with nefarious ideas, they really are taking advantage of the circumstances … and they’re using it to really turn the screws,” says Welsch.
Like Boatner, Welsch is holding off on any immediate action against the landlord. She wants to know how the evicted couple would like to proceed, and also has to consider how other families at the property, some of whom include small children, may be affected.
But something Welsch was able to do right away was tap into her community and get a network of phone calls in place to find help for the couple.
“I don’t think you survive these emergencies without community connections,” says Welsch. “It is community and those connections that protect our democracy, that protect our freedom, that protect our citizens, that help people through every trial and tribulation that they face.”
