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In Inglewood Wednesday morning, a white work van with ladders strapped to its roof sat empty in a parking lot near Sip Café. Employees inside told the Nashville Banner the van’s driver had been stopped by armed men in unmarked vehicles, who handcuffed him and took him away. The armed men, the employees said, were not wearing uniforms or badges indicating that they were with a government agency. On social media, word spread that the unidentified men were from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
"We are horrified that something this vile happened outside Sip,” reads a post on the shop’s Instagram account. “We urge all of our friends to be careful — this ambush happened out in the street just a little while ago."
It was one of multiple incidents that fueled alarm and uncertainty among immigrant communities and advocate networks throughout the day, as reported ICE sightings came from East and South Nashville. Rapid response operations like Music City MigraWatch posted photos on social media of what they believed to be ICE vehicles and the empty work vans left behind by the people ICE had taken. One post showed a white van pulled over by unmarked vehicles with red and blue flashing lights on Bell Road.
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But getting clear information about what had happened or was happening — who was taken and by whom — was complicated, given the agency’s tactics. A spokesperson for the Tennessee Highway Patrol — which collaborated with federal agents during a large operation in Nashville in May — told the Banner they were “not aware of any such activity.” A spokesperson for the Metro Nashville Police Department also said its officers weren’t involved in the incidents reported on social media Wednesday. ICE officials could not be reached for comment.
The Spanish-language news outlet Nashville Noticias reported Wednesday evening that at least eight people had been taken into custody by ICE agents in various locations, citing relatives of the people who’d been detained.
Ashley Warbington, an advocate with Music City MigraWatch, tells the Banner the group first received a tip around 6:30 a.m. from a person who believed they’d seen ICE agents in Nippers Corner in South Nashville. A volunteer named Carleen, who asked that her last name be withheld, says she and her husband drove to the area to verify the report and saw unmarked vehicles with flashing blue and red lights surrounding a red work van in the center lane of a five-lane road. By the time they turned around, the van had been moved to a nearby parking lot and was unoccupied. She did not see anyone being detained. She said the group had flagged one of the vehicles as having "been associated with ICE in the past" and was further convinced of the affiliation by the red and blue lights.
Warbington says volunteers and community members have been following Music City MigraWatch’s reports of ICE activity on social media accounts and alerting the group when they believe they see the same vehicles in other areas.
One of the group’s volunteers arrived at Sip Café three minutes after receiving a call about suspected ICE activity there, but the reported agents were already gone. It’s not clear how many people were detained at that location.
Warbington says Wednesday was an unusually active day for ICE watchers in Nashville.
“We’ve had days similar in the past couple of weeks, but it has been in Lebanon, for example, or in Franklin,” Warbington says. “This was mostly in Davidson County.”
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The apparent incident at Sip Café, she says, had set off a flurry of rumors and reports of ICE activity elsewhere in the East Nashville area, most of which could not be verified. Music City MigraWatch received at least 20 calls, she says, on top of numerous text messages and social media messages.
“My fingers are tired from texting, I’ll just say that,” says Warbington.
Zach Young, who represents the Inglewood area on the Metro Nashville Public Schools board, says he heard from another public official that a suspected ICE vehicle had been spotted near an elementary school in the neighborhood. He says he informed the principal, who was “already standing in his office looking out the window.” Young says school officials are “very well versed” in policies for responding to a law enforcement inquiry, including seeking counsel from Metro lawyers.
According to Young, it appears that the suspected ICE vehicle was only coincidentally in the area and not targeting the school.
“It would be terrible for ICE to conduct any sort of enforcement around a school, because we want families to think of schools as a safe space,” he said.
On Wednesday afternoon and into the evening, the Banner observed white passenger vans and other unmarked vehicles with government and out-of-state plates entering and exiting a federal law enforcement facility off Brick Church Pike Wednesday afternoon, mirroring activity at the same facility where people were detained during the May ICE operation.
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
