Travis Dorman

USA TODAY NETWORK - Tennessee

Correction: An earlier version of this article misspelled the last names of two organizers. Their names are Pratik Dash and Lisa Sherman-Nikolaus.

More than 100 people marched through downtown Knoxville on Monday afternoon to protest the Knox County Sheriff's Office's application for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s controversial 287(g) program.

The group marched from the City County Building on Main Street to Market Square, beating drums, holding aloft signs and shouting chants in English and Spanish such as "No 287(g) here in Tennessee," "No papers, no fear," and, "This is what democracy looks like."

"Today we are here to tell Sheriff J.J. Jones that our fight will continue and that we will remain standing," said the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition's campaign organizer, Pratik Dash, into a loudspeaker. "We will remain united. And we will continue to defend our immigrant families here in Knoxville."

In an executive order signed five days after he took office, President Donald Trump reinstated the 287(g) program, which authorizes law enforcement agencies to stop, question and detain suspected undocumented immigrants. Their deportation status is then left to the federal government.

If approved, the Knox County Sheriff's Office would be the only department in Tennessee and the 39th in the nation, according to ICE's website. The agency's application already has the support of federal Republican lawmakers from Tennessee: Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker and Rep. John J. Duncan Jr.

Davidson County previously participated in the program but abandoned it after a series of controversial civil rights cases, such as when a woman was shackled to a bed in Nashville while giving birth after being arrested during a traffic stop. She was later awarded $200,000 in damages.

Critics of the program say it separates families, is expensive for taxpayers and ends up deporting undocumented immigrants who have only committed minor crimes.

"What we've seen in communities that have this kind of program is it really erodes community trust with law enforcement," said Lisa Sherman-Nikolaus, the policy director from the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

In a March 31 letter to the the Department of Homeland Security, which ICE is under, the American Civil Liberties Union expressed "deep concerns" about the 287(g) program and called the Knox County Sheriff's Office an unsuitable partner because of "its record of abuse as well as its horrific jail conditions."

The letter also called unconstitutional comments made in 2013 by KCSO Sheriff Jimmy "J.J." Jones after federal authorities rejected the county's first ICE application due to budget constraints.

“If need be,” the Sheriff said then, “I will stack these violators like cordwood in the Knox County jail until the appropriate federal agency responds.”