Mayor to ICE: Stop posing as police, undermining trust in Nashville Kurdish community

Ariana Maia Sawyer | The Tennessean

Show Caption Hide Caption ICE Kurdish police stop Morton and Nolensville Nashville Mayor Megan Barry has asked ICE to stop acting like city police officers after she viewed a video showing a man being stopped by ICE agents wearing vests that said "POLICE."

Nashville Mayor Megan Barry had choice words this week for federal immigration authorities who've been targeting members of the local Kurdish community for deportation.

In a letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement community relations officer Joshua Jack on Tuesday, Barry accused ICE agents of undermining public safety by failing to distinguish themselves from local police.

► Read More: ICE targets some Nashville Kurds for deportation after U.S. deal with Iraq

The letter comes as word of ICE agents stopping and questioning Kurdish residents has raised tensions in the community. Barry called the reports "disturbing."

"First and foremost, our Metro Nashville Police Department has gone to great lengths in building relationships with our New American community in order to promote public safety," Barry wrote. "This effort can be undermined when ICE agents act aggressively toward our citizens without properly identifying themselves as agents of the federal government rather than local law enforcement."

The criticism stems in part from a video she watched of an agent wearing a vest that said "POLICE" on it while stopping and questioning a Kurdish-American citizen "for no apparent reason," she said.

ICE spokesman Thomas Byrd said ICE never makes random stops or checkpoints.

The federal agency is legally allowed to put the word police on clothing and to identify themselves as police, though U.S. Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY) introduced a bill in April that would prohibit immigration officers from wearing any clothing bearing the word. Some other federal agencies use "police" on their clothing, including tax officers.

Byrd said ICE agents identify themselves as police because it's "the most universally recognizable symbol of law enforcement in most cultures."

But Immigration lawyer Andrew Free, who is representing some of those who have been arrested, said people dealing with immigration issues are just as likely to recognize the word "immigration" or ICE.

"The police build trust and ICE wants that mantle because they don't have it," Free said.

He said the enforcement operation over the past couple of weeks is a public relations ploy.

"It's just dishonest to the public because these folks were checking in," he said. "It's not like these people were being caught in jail after having committed a crime."

Many of those arrested were on an order of supervision, which required them to check in with ICE periodically but otherwise allowed them to live and work as they wished.

"They have jobs and they have kids, and so when you send these ops teams to Kurdish neighborhoods at 6 o'clock in the morning, every morning, looking for these people instead of just calling them, you set up this criminalized narrative."

Nashville has the largest population of Kurdish residents in the U.S., many of whom came to the country as refugees fleeing war and genocide.

Free said Monday at least 12 Iraqi nationals have been taken into custody over the past week and that more people are currently being detained in Nashville at one time than any other since President Trump was elected.

Byrd said 11 Iraqi Kurds were being detained Wednesday from across the state, the majority of whom were arrested in Nashville.

The mayor also called on ICE to release the names of those individuals being detained as a way to allay fears that non-criminal immigrants and refugees are being swept up in the enforcement operation.

The arrests are the result of a deal the U.S. brokered with Iraq, ICE confirmed Monday.

"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," Byrd said.

Iraq was dropped from President Donald Trump's revised travel ban after the Iraqi government agreed to accept Iraqi nationals who have been ordered deported from the U.S., among other concessions.

► Read more: Kurdish family arrives in Nashville after travel ban delay

The second travel ban has been tied up in court since it was issued in March, with opponents arguing it unconstitutionally discriminates against Muslims.

On Monday, Byrd called the arrests an effort "to process the backlog of these individuals."

Members of the Kurdish community have expressed fear that they will be deported to Baghdad where they run the risk of being attacked or killed by ISIS. Most of the Nashville Kurds are from Kurdistan, a semi-autonomous region in Northern Iraq.

The Kurdish military has worked closely with the U.S. in the fight against ISIS for several years.

Reach Ariana Sawyer at asawyer@tennessean.com or on Twitter @a_maia_sawyer.