New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Nashville leaders speak out on ICE arrests at local town hall

After a week of repeated U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement operations left a number of South Nashville residents devastated, Senator Cory Booker, a prominent Democratic senator from New Jersey, visited Nashville to speak with a number of city leaders and community members at a packed town hall on May 9.

Mass traffic sweeps began on May 4 and have continued throughout the week, with Tennessee Highway Patrol working in tandem with ICE agents in the heavily immigrant and Latino neighborhoods around Nolensville Pike and Harding Place. Local activists and lawmakers say the operations have since continued nightly, and claim the stops are the result of racial profiling.

The THP in a May 7 statement said the sweeps have so far netted at least 360 traffic stops and nearly 100 people detained by ICE.

The operations took city officials by surprise and sparked backlash and calls for actions  from local and state leaders, a number of who spoke at the town hall held at First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill in Nashville.  

More: Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell: Recent ICE arrests caused 'deep community harm'

"When will it be enough?"

In the packed nave of the historic church, Booker called the current immigration crackdowns a "storm."

"There are things going on in our country that I did not think would go on," he said. "I never imagine that people would be disappearing off of our streets. I never thought we would have an issue that if you say something that I don't like, you're out of this nation. They did that in the Red Scare…this is not normal."

Booker, whose mother is a Fisk University graduate, spoke on impacts he has seen similar immigrations sweeps inflict across the country, and took questions from multiple audience members, including the daughter of a local resident who was detained in Sunday's operation.

"This immigration assault in our country is not about keeping us safe," he said. "If it was about that, they would be doing what they said they would do: getting dangerous people off our streets…We need to have immigration enforcement that is not violating the fundamental rights of this nation like due process."

In a later conversation with The Tennessean, Booker reiterated the importance of protecting fundamental rights in the face of an immigration crisis.

"Every American should understand that an infringement on the First Amendment rights of anybody is a threat to the First Amendment rights of everybody," he said. "So when we see things — even if its speech we don't agree with — and its being used as a pretext for abducting someone and disappearing someone off our streets without due process, that should strike fear and worry in us about the erosion of the right.

"When will it be enough for you to speak up and say something against what we see happening? (President Donald) Trump continues to cross constitutional line after constitutional line. And all of us have to defend our constitution."

Nashville City Mayor Freddie O'Connell similarly did not mince words at the event, decrying the ICE presence as "unwelcome visitors from Washington D.C.," and demanding that law enforcement provide the names of those detained — a move that ICE officials have yet to do.

'We don't know their names, because they have been taken from our streets by Homeland Security," he said, adding, "Show us the names. Tell us the charges."

In addition to not knowing who was detained, O'Connell empathized with the community's prevalent attitude of concern regarding surprise arrests.

More: Federal immigration agents arrest Newark mayor trying to enter NJ detention center

"I will tell you, in America, in this moment, in my hometown, I never expected to be having to ask my legal director multiple times a week some version of the question, 'If I do this will I get arrested?' "  O'Connell said, referencing the news that the mayor of Newark, New Jersey had been arrested mere hours before, after being charged with trespassing in an ICE facility.

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville ICE arrests: Cory Booker, Freddie O'Connell speak out