Some Metro councilmembers are working to prevent the opening of a national U.S. Department of Homeland Security enforcement call center in Davidson County.
The $63 million federal contract was awarded to Alaska-based company Koniag Government Services, as reported by the Tennessee Lookout, and is now planned for Donelson (and was previously planned for Adams, Tenn.). DHS encompasses the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Councilmembers Terry Vo, Sandra Sepulveda and Zulfat Suara took part in a Friday morning press conference at Connection United Methodist Church. Also present were representatives from the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition and other community and faith leaders.
"We are currently looking at legislation that would look at any zoning and permitting at this time," Sepulveda told reporters. "So we are in the process of talking to community partners and different Metro officials to see what our path will be. Know that we are here, and we will be fighting with every breath we have until we find solutions.”
The Lookout also reports that a spokesperson for Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell says his office is “still in the process of getting a consistent depiction of what is planned.”
287(g) legislation heads to Senate, poised to tie local agencies to immigration enforcement across state
Last month the council advanced legislation to use eminent domain to block a planned data center near the Nashville Zoo.
Tessa Lemos Del Pino is executive director of Tennessee Justice for Our Neighbors, a nonprofit law office that focuses on immigration cases. She called the call center “the next step in [the federal government’s] systematic streamlining of ICE and law enforcement collaboration across the entire nation, with a special focus on targeting and deporting those who came to the U.S. as unaccountable children.”
TIRRC advocacy manager Cali VanCleve said the call center would not affect Nashville and in Tennessee solely.
"More importantly, it will send significant and harmful ripple effects across the entire nation, making the land, the people, and tax dollars of our community and our city complicit in the [Trump] administration's heinous, cruel and costly mass detention and deportation agenda,” VanCleve said.
On Thursday, TIRRC will host an event to discuss the state's 287g agreements between local law enforcement agencies and ICE, and “how it's harming our communities, as well as tactics for taking action against this ICE call center.”
During this year's session of the Tennessee General Assembly, Republicans announced an immigration-related legislative package in coordination with the White House and top Trump adviser Stephen Miller. Many bills passed easily with the supermajority party in control of the session, including legislation requiring local governments to work with ICE and criminalizing the act of simply existing in the state as an undocumented immigrant.
This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
