What to know about how Mayor O'Connell responded to Nashville ICE operation

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6 days ago

As a weeklong U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation continued in south Nashville in early May, Mayor Freddie O'Connell made it clear where he stands.
While ICE and the Tennessee Highway Patrol collaborated to make 468 traffic stops and arrest nearly 200 immigrants, O'Connell criticized them for causing "deep community harm." And as the sweeps continued throughout the week, O'Connell and Metro Legal Director Wally Dietz repeatedly called for transparency from ICE about who exactly had been arrested and what they'd been charged with. Ultimately, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security named six of the 196 people arrested during the sweeps.
O'Connell also updated an executive order requiring city departments to report communications with federal immigration officials to the mayor's office, and addressed community and Metro Nashville Council concerns about whether the Metro Nashville Police Department was involved in the operation.
It's all culminated in an investigation that's now underway at the federal level, based on a call from U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, to determine whether the mayor had been "obstructing ICE operations."
Here's what to know about how O'Connell responded to the Nashville ICE operation.
Ogles has made it clear that the amended Executive Order 30 is key to his complaints. It's one of a few documents and communications he's seeking in the congressional investigation.
But what does the order actually do?
Executive Order 30 isn't new — in fact, it's well over a year old, having first been issued in January 2024. But it's re-emerged in the wake of the ICE operation because O'Connell amended it to allow for a shorter timeline for reporting.
The order requires city departments to report communications with federal immigration authorities to the mayor's office. Emergency services departments like MNPD, the Nashville Fire Department and the Office of Emergency Management must report within one business day, while all other departments have three days to report communications "regarding an activity outside regular policies/procedures."
Communications involving non-emergency departments related to modifying a department's policies or practices, meanwhile, must be reported "with sufficient time for the mayor's office to assess and respond to such proposed modifications, including seeking community input if appropriate."
The executive order also requires city departments to designate one person who's responsible for collecting and transmitting immigration communications to the mayor's office, which would later be posted online for transparency. It also calls on the Department of Human Resources and Metro Legal to develop a training program for reporting immigration communications.
Early on in the ICE operation, O'Connell was joined by Hal Cato, the CEO of the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, to announced the Belonging Fund. Cato said funds could go toward addressing childcare and transportation costs, housing assistance and food insecurity.
Like the executive order, the fund has been the subject of recent scrutiny — Metro Nashville Council Member David Benton, who appeared with Ogles at a press conference on Memorial Day, has called for a state or federal audit of the fund.
But the fund itself was established by the Community Foundation, not the city, and the foundation's website states that donations come solely from individual donors and private organizations. The website description further clarifies that the fund "provides financial support to nonprofit organizations offering emergency assistance to immigrants in our region during times of crisis."
While announcing the fund, O'Connell said it wouldn't be intended to support immigration legal services and added that the city needed to make certain whether it could donate to the fund directly. Based on the website description — which states that "no taxpayer dollars are being used in the administration or distribution of this fund" — it appears that answer was no.
Nashville's mayor has not shied away from criticism of the ICE operation, or how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has gone about publicizing information about the people arrested during the sweeps.
At an appearance with New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, for example, O'Connell decried the ICE presence as 'unwelcome visitors from Washington D.C.' and once again demanded that law enforcement provide the names of the people arrested as part of the sweeps.
He's also indicated plenty of times, including at the event with Booker, that he's been in constant communication with Dietz, the legal director, about which actions might leave him susceptible to retaliation.
'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 earlier in May.
Regarding the amended executive order, O'Connell has also previously told reporters that it was "an open question" whether it would have legally allowed the city to publicize an impending immigration operation.
At a special meeting on May 7, council members learned that a federal agent contacted Nashville's Department of Emergency Communications to request extra police patrols at Nashville's ICE facility on Brick Church Park Drive ahead of the operation, but there wasn't a sufficient process in place to inform department leadership and other city offices of the impending ICE action.
That informed a key criticism from Metro Nashville Council members and community members who expressed concern about whether MNPD officers were involved in ICE's operation — that if the executive order had been followed in the first place, there would've been a greater awareness among city departments ahead of the May operation.
'I don't know that there would have been considerable change, but I think instead of asking questions about what people knew, I think both (Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake) and I would have been able to at least make sure that within departments we knew that there was an uptick in federal enforcement,' O'Connell said on May 9.
As for whether other city departments have been involved, the short answer is no. During the May 7 special meeting, multiple city officials asserted that MNPD officers indeed were not involved in the ICE sweeps. That's a message O'Connell and Drake continued to share in the days following the meeting.
Outside of responses from O'Connell and members of the Metro Nashville Council, Nashvillians have also been vocal. The May 7 special meeting featured a packed meeting gallery, filled with community members voicing their frustrations.
A recent Vanderbilt University poll gauged community opinion on the issue of immigration, as well.
A majority of respondents overall, 61%, said they'd support deporting individuals who are living in the United States illegally if they have a criminal record unrelated to their immigration status, but only 26% of respondents said the same even if an individual lacks a criminal background.
Regardless of criminal status, a much larger share of Republicans supported deportations in both cases, at 87% and 70% respectively. Democrat respondents, meanwhile, supported deportations for undocumented immigrants with a criminal background at a rate of 46%, and only 9% for those with no criminal background.
In the poll, the highest share of respondents overall — 43% — said Nashville should actively resist efforts by the federal government to carry out deportations. The next highest share of 35% of respondents said cities like Nashville should do nothing and allow the federal government to enforce federal laws, and the smallest group of 22% of respondents said Nashville should actively assist efforts by the federal government to carry out deportations.
Democrats and Republicans responded with a similar share to the dueling questions of supporting or resisting immigration efforts — 62% of Democrat respondents said the city should resist federal deportation efforts, compared to just 6% of Republicans, and 61% of Republican respondents said the city should help the federal government, compared to just 6% of Democrats.
Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him at [e-mail].
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: What to know about how mayor responded to Nashville ICE operation