A government contracting document details plans to open a national call center in the greater Nashville area to coordinate efforts to track unaccompanied immigrant children and deport them. The request for information, issued by the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, describes a round-the-clock operation that will receive and process 6,000 to 7,000 calls per day.
Nashville under pressure as state and feds push for stronger legal muscle to arrest immigrants
The call center is part of the Trump administration’s aggressive push to expand the adoption of 287(g) agreements, which allow state and local agencies to coordinate with ICE and grants a degree of immigration enforcement authority. The 287(g) program has been criticized for eroding trust between citizens and police and for encouraging racial profiling and civil rights abuse.
Nashville ended its participation in the 287(g) program more than a decade ago, but this year Tennessee lawmakers created incentives for communities to opt into the program. State lawmakers have passed other bills targeting undocumented immigrants, including legislation criminalizing sanctuary cities and the smuggling, hiding and harboring of undocumented immigrants. A bill that would have allowed public schools to deny access to undocumented students stalled, but could return in 2026.
A special session at the start of the year also approved the creation of a centralized immigration enforcement division that will be exempt from many open records laws.
Immigration roundups terrorize South Nashville and take residents with no criminal history
The focus on tracking children echoes Trump’s previous claims that the Biden administration lost track of hundreds of thousands of migrant children, an exaggeration that seems to stem mostly from reports of missed court dates. Other immigration experts say claims of “missing” migrant children reflect gaps in paperwork, and not necessarily physical disappearances.
The contract to create the call center quickly drew criticism from local immigration advocates.
“Right now we are in the middle of the longest government shutdown ever,” says Judith Clerjeune, advocacy director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, in a statement. “We have families who are choosing between putting food on the table and paying their bills. We have kids going hungry. And instead of using our resources to support families we have a regime who is choosing to target children, and it’s unthinkable.”
ICE coordinated with the Tennessee Highway Patrol in May for a massive traffic operation that resulted in the arrests of 196 people, most of whom had no criminal history.
