Case Explained: Memphis mayor claims ICE cooperation only for fighting crime • Tennessee Lookout – Legal Perspective

With much of the nation in shock over shooting deaths in the feds’ Minneapolis immigration operation, Memphis Mayor Paul Young is finding himself in the uncomfortable position of defending statements he made about local police working with the Department of Homeland Security.

Most pointedly, Young is skirmishing with Marc Perrusquia, director and editor at The Institute for Public Service Reporting after drawing praise from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is under fire for three people’s deaths, including two during Minneapolis protests and the shooting of Keith Porter of Los Angeles early this year.. 

Young claims that the University of Memphis institute engaged in “misinformation” and “poor journalism” with a report on what he said in an October meeting with the Hispanic community at Mullins United Methodist Church, only to see his words come back at him like a boomerang.

Caught between Noem’s kind words about Memphis officials and local residents weary with the Memphis Safe Task Force after five months and thousands of traffic stops, Young took to Instagram this week. 

In addition to bashing The Institute, the mayor said in his post that the city’s ICE cooperation deals with fighting violent crime, not immigration enforcement and added a written statement noting that Homeland Security is part of the task force and works with Memphis Police, but not on immigration.

Perrusquia stood by the institute’s report on the church meeting and pointed out that the mayor said exactly what he reiterated this week.

“This matter is complicated by the fact that many members of the public are skeptical about contentions that MPD is not collaborating with ICE on immigration enforcement,” Perrusquia added in the Facebook post.

He noted, though, that people are skeptical “because of what they are seeing out in the streets.” In fact, Young spoke at the church in October to respond to photos of an ICE unit’s personnel patrolling with Memphis Police, Perrusquia wrote.

The task force reported in early January nearly 4,700 arrests of violent fugitives. It has also made roughly 48,000 traffic stops, mostly citing impoverished people who are just trying to make another month’s rent. 

Memphis folks tell me residents there don’t mind the task force helping serve thousands of languishing warrants. But they don’t like ICE patrolling the city.

And even though they’re resigned to the task force’s presence, which has basically closed downtown Memphis, they wonder what will happen when this experiment with no real basis ends – if ever.

While trying to distance himself from the Trump administration’s immigration policy, Young appears to be using the president’s playbook on bashing the media and doubling down on what he said four months ago.

Since October, The Institute has requested more clarity from the mayor and asked for an interview but couldn’t get one, though the offer stands, according to Perrusquia’s post.

The initial article describes the October meeting as “contentious” and says the mayor confirmed police and ICE are working together after city leaders denied for years any work between Memphis police and ICE.

Mayor Young tells Hispanic leaders Memphis Police Department is working with ICE

“Young said his aim in allowing the cooperation was to steer federal agents away from mass deportation and toward helping MPD investigate murders and other violent crimes. If he fought the administration of President Donald Trump, as officials in Chicago are doing, the federal government would respond with even harsher tactics, he said,” the article says.

After winning a contentious mayoral race in 2023, Young isn’t going against the grain. He opted against joining a lawsuit against Gov. Bill Lee over the deployment of National Guard troops to Memphis as part of the task force. Instead, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, Memphis City Councilman JB Smiley, County Commissioners Erika Sugarmon and Henri Brooks, state Reps. G.A. Hardaway and Gabby Salinas of Memphis and state Sen. Jeff Yarbro of Nashville led the claim that the move was illegal. Their argument was upheld by a Nashville chancellor but is being appealed, leaving troops in Memphis, largely as a military police force to guide visitors along Beale Street. They aren’t to be armed unless Memphis Police requests it.

Their presence is mainly a show of force. And the reaction from Shelby County residents is mixed, with Black and brown urban folks suffering paranoia because of the task force’s traffic enforcement tactics. In contrast, most white suburbanites say they appreciate a safer downtown, which is hardly a bee hive unless a major festival is playing.

Attendance at Grizzlies basketball games is no barometer, either, Memphians say, because the team is struggling and superstar Ja Morant, the constant subject of trade rumors, is hurt.

In the meantime, Memphians can watch the back-and-forth between Young and Perrusquia.

Spray this

An amendment to legislation that would have given pesticide manufacturers broad legal immunity couldn’t keep the bill from being taken off notice last week.

The proposed change by Republican Rep. Johnny Garrett (according to the Tennessee Journal), which wasn’t heard in the Judiciary Committee went against the previous bill supported by the Farm Bureau, saying EPA-approved warning labels are “deemed a sufficient warning label for the purposes of a civil action commenced under a provision of state law concerning the duty to warn or label.” But that wouldn’t apply if the EPA determines a manufacturer “knowingly withheld, concealed, misrepresented, or destroyed material information regarding the human health risks of the pesticide in order to obtain or maintain approval of its label by the EPA.”

No wonder it floundered. After working for nine months to protect Bayer, the owner of Monsanto and Roundup, lawmakers couldn’t figure out how to protect the big boys from litigation.

Weed-killer legal immunity bill wilts in Tennessee House committee

They also ran headlong into Make America Healthy Again, a group connected to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

MAHA’s Caitlin Sinclair took to Instagram to claim a victory in Tennessee (yet another social media post).

“Big chem tried to sneak in legal immunity for pesticide harm. MAHA got loud and that bill was pulled. It’s a win,” Sinclair said.

Hard to imagine. Someone in the Trump administration kills even a Republican bill. Of course, it could come back.

The age-old argument

Five Tennesseans are petitioning the U.S. District Court in Knoxville to let them intervene in a case between the Knox County School Board and The Wilberforce Academy of Knoxville, which is seeking to open a religious public charter school.

The Rev. Richard Coble, Amanda Collins, Kerry Dooley, Elizabeth Porter, and the Rev. Katrina Sharp filed the request to oppose the academy’s efforts to force the board to authorize it and provide funding as a religious public charter school.

“Public education is part of the common good. A religious charter school would be at odds with the need to ensure public schools remain appropriate for and welcoming to students of all faiths, families, and backgrounds,” said Collins, a retired school psychologist and parent of Knox County public school students. “And it would divert already limited public funds and scarce resources away from other public schools in Knox County.”

The proposed interveners contend that charter schools are part of the Knox County public school system and cannot promote religion.

Coble said in a release that all faiths are served best when free of “undue state interference.”

Ah, but the slope is slippery. 

Tennessee is providing some $144 million to students to enroll in private schools, most of which are religious affiliates, creating what critics call a massive entitlement program likely to run the state off a fiscal cliff.

What harm could it do, though, for students to get a little religion, especially since we’re suffering from a moral crisis that’s causing high crime, social media bullying and drug addiction?

None of that stuff was around before the U.S. Supreme Court banned school prayer in 1962. Or was it?

“Semolina Pilchard, climbing up the Eiffel Tower / Elementary penguin singing Hari Krishna / Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe” *

*The Beatles,“I Am the Walrus”