At least one Democrat on the Metro Nashville Council claimed local politicians were caught off guard by the decision to build a call center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Nashville, while a spokesperson for Mayor Freddie O’Connell said his office has yet to learn what will happen inside the building. State Representative Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville) said the call center will house “ICE and its mercenaries of terror.”
“The Mayor’s Office is still in the process of getting a consistent depiction of what is planned,” said a spokesperson for O’Connell, according to WSMV 4. Metro Councilmember Jeff Gregg told the outlet that he and his colleagues “were blindsided by the announcement.”
Before describing ICE agents as “mercenaries of terror,” Behn, who lost her special election for U.S. Congress last year, told the outlet the ICE call center is “a $63 million surveillance operation.”
The executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), which will receive a $735,000 grant under Nashville’s latest budget, made similar remarks last week, telling The Tennessee Lookout that ICE was “trying to set up shop in middle Tennessee to facilitate this terror on a massive scale.”
TIRRC’s executive director declared, “Tennessee is ground zero for this administration’s insidious attempt to embed immigration enforcement in all facets of our everyday life.”
While Gregg (pictured above) said that local leaders were “blindsided,” and O’Connell claimed his office did not have a “consistent depiction” of what will occur at the call center, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) first announced that it was seeking proposals for a call center in Nashville last year.
According to the original notice by the federal government, the ICE call center was originally expected to open in March and be fully operational by June. The latest data, uploaded to a government database, shows a $17.5 million contract for the Nashville facility was awarded to an Alaska-based company.
The November 2025 DHS request for proposals received widespread news coverage, including national outlets like Reuters and ABC News, as well as local outlets such as The Tennessee Star, The Nashville Scene, WKRN 2, and WSMV 4.
DHS previously said the call center will operate 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, with three work shifts. It will eventually be capable of accepting 7,000 calls per day.
Government documents suggest the location will mostly field calls about 287(g) agreements from members of local and state law enforcement. Those agreements, which are now mandatory for Tennessee sheriffs, allow law enforcement agencies to perform certain federal immigration enforcement tasks.
Earlier this year, a report released by the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference found that more than 11,000 convictions or charges were filed against illegal aliens in 2025. In June, ICE announced that nearly 120 illegal aliens were arrested over one week as a result of an operation in east Tennessee.
In January, DHS said assaults against federal immigration officers had increased by 1,347 percent since 2024.
– – –
Tom Pappert is a 2025 recipient of the Dao Prize and the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star. He also reports for the Star News Network. Follow Tom on X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Jeff Gregg” by Jeff Gregg.
