Inside the volunteer group patrolling Nashville to look for ICE activity

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29-05-2025

In the early hours of Sunday, May 11, a group of Nashville women sat staring at an empty Tennessee State Trooper Headquarters parking lot in South Nashville. The inky darkness was interrupted only by the gentle sounds of their idling vehicles, a buzzing streetlight and the occasional owl.
To many, this would be peaceful. But to these women, the silent darkness was a warning.
'They must have figured out our schedule,' said Ashley Warbington, a Nashville resident and legal professional, tapping the steering wheel as she looked at the parking lot, where there normally sat dozens of State Trooper vehicles. 'Where are they?'
Behind her sat Sarah Shoop Neumann, another Nashville resident and activist, her face lit only by her phone screen.
'Maybe they're giving us a break,' she said. 'It is Mother's Day.'
After a week of aggressive immigration enforcement in Nashville that saw the arrests of 196 people, most still not named publicly, Warbington and Neumann were bleary-eyed and exhausted.
They, along with dozens of volunteers across Nashville, were perched in similar locations across the city—some by law enforcement facilities, some by downtown businesses, some scouring the interstates — all connected by a series of encrypted group chats that help volunteers monitor ICE activity.
The group, named Music City Migra-Watch, which operates under the local immigration advocacy group called The ReMIX, existed long before the surprise immigration operation that began in Nashville on May 4. After the week of arrests and detainments, the group had exploded in volunteer numbers.
Now, around 200 people are active in a volunteer effort to verify and respond to ICE activity in the area, 24 hours a day, on rotating shifts.
So in the early morning hours of Mother's Day, instead of looking forward to breakfast in bed or time with their children, Warbington and Neumann sat waiting in the dark for a call for help.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement New Orleans Field Office announced May 13 that the weeklong immigration operation resulted in the arrest of 196 immigrants in Nashville.
The agency said some had significant criminal histories, later naming five of the arrested.
The remaining 191 have not been publicly identified, leaving scores of families in Tennessee with little to no paper trail to find where their loved ones were taken.
The arrests were nearly all results of traffic stops initiated by the Tennessee State Highway Patrol, who had ICE agents either in the THP vehicle with them or tailing behind them, often in unmarked vehicles, volunteers working on the monitoring effort told The Tennessean. According to their accounts and video evidence provided to The Tennessean, many stops were made for tinted windows or broken headlights.
In a video of a traffic stop provided to The Tennessean by Rep. Justin Jones, D-Nashville, on May 9, a THP officer who identified himself as Officer Phillips said the reason for the stop was because a car's headlight was out.
When Jones asked if 'that warranted calling ICE,' the trooper replied 'No,' and added that ICE was with him.
The department said fewer than 10 troopers participated in the operation.
Migra-Watch's numbers are much larger. The group operates with a number of chats. One gathers social media reports of ICE activity and monitors tips sent into the Migra-Watch hotline. A second verifies information by doing more research or by flagging members in a third chat filled with volunteers ready to drive to the location at any hour of the day.
The third group chat is divided geographically by Interstate 40 — currently, around 50 members of the group operate north of the interstate, and 100 operate below it. Many members are local activists, religious leaders, and relatives of immigrants and cover multiple overnight shifts each week.
Once volunteers arrive at confirmed ICE activity, they video law enforcement activity. If an immigrant is detained, they try to get the immigrant's name to inform their family.
Sometimes, the volunteers follow THP and ICE vehicles around town at a distance to report where law enforcement is focusing their efforts.
'One night, maybe for 20 minutes, (THP officers) knew we were following them,' Warbington said. 'They would try to lose us. They got on the interstate and got off on the next exit, circling. But in that amount of time I know that someone could have gotten pulled over, and they didn't. And that means everything to me.'
The group operates within the letter of the law, according to Warbington. They know they cannot interfere with an arrest, and with the recent passage of the 25-foot buffer law in Tennessee—which goes into effect July 1— volunteers are cautious about how close they stand to law enforcement to video.
Aside from specializing in bilingual legal advocacy, Warbington also has a close relative who has been working their way through the legal system to obtain their green card.
'I felt like I needed to be there to witness and to help in that way, because I was able,' she said. 'I keep trying to find the right word for what we witnessed. I don't have one. I wish I could have done more. And I carry some guilt about that.'
She recounted getting the call through the hotline on the evening of May 4, when the operation started, reporting potential ICE activity.
'I was really nervous, because we had not seen anything like this,' she said. 'I did not know what to expect when I showed up. The second I got there, though, and we confirmed it was what the caller said it was, it was like I could not get the messages and the videos out to the group fast enough before I was stopped at another location.'
She snapped her fingers rapidly. 'It was one, after another, after another. The stops were so fast, one after another, in small locations…They weren't even ticketing anyone, that we saw. They were off to the next one, often before the car even pulled away.'
Sarah Shoop Neumann, who describes her life as 'pre-Covenant and post-Covenant,' is well known in Nashville for her activism for gun reform following the 2023 Covenant School Shooting, where one of her children was present.
Over the past two years, she has been an active member of the immigration advocacy community.
'I just felt sick,' she said, describing watching the operation unfold on May 4. '(The hotline) was getting all these phone calls from worried family members who had no idea where their loved ones were taken, and we realized that we need to step up and advocate for these people. They can't do this alone.'
She described one elderly woman who could not find her husband after the first wave of arrests. She was given a phone number by officers to call and locate her husband, but when she called the number, it 'didn't lead anywhere.'
'There was no real support from the people who are supposed to be our protectors of our city and our citizens,' Neumann said.
The evening of May 4, there were only two volunteers on shift to verify claims south of I-40, Warbington included.
'I don't even know how many calls came into the hotline that night,' Warbington said. 'I wasn't even able to pay attention to it because it was moving so fast. I don't want to say we weren't prepared, but we weren't expecting that.'
She said that she and her shift partner saw at least 10 stops each, in separate areas of town, within the span of three hours.
'We were doing our best to upload videos and text people so that word got out on social media to get people off the roads,' she said.
Still, some people did not get the message.
'I cannot get the face of that gentleman as he got dragged out of the car out of my mind,' Warbington said, referring to the arrest of Nashville resident Edgardo Campos on May 10, who was arrested after being unable to produce identification other than his expired driver's license. He was transferred to a detention center in Knoxville to await deportation proceedings.
The arrest sparked intense backlash from Nashville's Catholic community, who called him the 'heart' of his parish.
Neumann said the adrenaline rush after witnessing such arrests was startling.
'I don't know if I would believe the things I saw if I didn't see them,' she said. 'Especially like those first couple nights we went out: you just watched them pull over person after person who looked brown. Twice we saw them pull over somebody who turned out to be Black, and they just immediately let them go…they're clearly only looking for Latinos, and trying to just get as many as possible, as fast as possible.'
The Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, which oversees the THP, in a statement said it "categorically rejects any suggestion that our troopers engage in racial profiling or target individuals based on ethnicity, race, or national origin."
On the evening of May 14, nearly 100 people gathered sat in the small Center for Contemplative Justice in West Nashville chanting 'I have the freedom of speech!'
The statement was part of the Bystander Training program, hosted by multiple advocacy groups, including The ReMIX, which focused on understanding the constitutional rights granted to immigrants and non-immigrants.
'We are one community,' said Lhorraine London Polite, Nashville resident and founder and CEO of the nonprofit group Laurel Crowned Women. 'The attacks that are happening on our community are attacks on us all. Because if I disappear, you will feel that. And if you disappear, I will feel that. So we are going to take every measure we can to protect us all.'
People at the meeting later broke off into groups to train in the advocacy groups' programs, including the Migra-Watch hotline.
Warbington said this effort is part of Migra-Watch's, and ReMIX's, attempt to be ready for the next wave of immigration arrests.
Volunteer members are closely monitoring immigration bills that were passed in the recent legislative session, especially one that would make it a crime to 'harbor' or conceal individuals without lawful immigration status.
'Everyone is talking about it,' Warbington said. 'I don't know if we have a plan for it.'
Neumann compared the onslaught of immigration enforcement—and the efforts of the community to support those in the crosshairs—to stories of the Underground Railroad that she learned in school.
'I grew up in Ohio, and where I lived, we had all the plaques about Underground Railroad houses,' she said. 'And I've thought about who the people were that were willing to do that and help people along. What did they face? What was being said about those people at the time? Clearly they didn't care about reputation over doing the right thing.
'The things that you learn about in school that just seemed so horrific and crazy, and you think 'Wow, I can't imagine what it was like to live in that, but surely people learned their lesson.''
She sighed.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Inside the volunteer group patrolling Nashville to look for ICE activity