Mayor Megan Barry responded to a recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in Nashville.
ICE agents in the Metro area have stepped up their enforcement and conducted multiple raids on Nashville's Kurdish community.
Word of more raids conducted over the weekend spread, causing concern throughout the city and among city leaders.
An ICE spokesman released the following statement about the raids:
“As a result of recent negotiations between the U.S. and Iraq, Iraq has recently agreed to accept a number of Iraqi nationals subject to orders of removal. As part of ICE’s efforts to process the backlog of these individuals, the agency recently arrested a number of Iraqi nationals, all of whom had criminal convictions for crimes including homicide, rape, aggravated assault, kidnapping, burglary, drug trafficking, robbery, sex assault, weapons violations and other offenses. Each of these individuals received full and fair immigration proceedings, after which a federal immigration judge found them ineligible for any form of relief under U.S. law and ordered them removed.”
Mayor Megan Barry sent a letter to the ICE Community Relations Officer, Joshua Jack, expressing her concerns about the raids.
Nashville's Black Lives Matter group streamed a protest against the raids on their Facebook Page Friday.
