Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s “Director of New and Indigenous Americans” finally became a U.S. citizen on Thursday after living in the country for apparently many years.
O’Connell posted the news to X that the Nashville government staffer, Jacky Gomez, was naturalized.
Please join me in congratulating our Director of New & Indigenous Americans, Jacky Gomez, naturalized as a citizen of the United States in a ceremony today at the Fred D. Thompson courthouse in Nashville.
Congratulations, Jacky! 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/pNnlEpr2G9
— Freddie O’Connell (@freddieoconnell) March 14, 2024
In the picture contained in O’Connell’s post, Gomez is flanked on both sides by photos of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Gomez is a graduate of Lipscomb University with a career in management, according to her LinkedIn profile. In addition to serving as the New Americans Director, Gomez is also the beautification commissioner for Nashville’s District 30.
The Office of New Americans, a diversity and inclusion initiative in the mayor’s office, is chiefly focused on recruiting foreign immigrants to participate in the Metro Nashville government, according to its webpage.
The Office of New Americans oversees a number of projects and initiatives, including the New Americans Advisory Council, “a group of leaders from Nashville refugee and immigrant communities” that collaborates with the mayor’s office on developing initiatives to “empower New Americans,” according to its webpage. Among the council members are representatives of organizations affiliated with particular ethnic and immigrant groups, as well as social justice activist organizations like the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.
The Office of New Americans, using the Pathway for New Americans initiative, assists illegal immigrants in Nashville working to become U.S. citizens with resources to prepare for the naturalization process.
However, the office has also been at the center of controversy surrounding the enforcement of immigration laws.
In 2019, Former Nashville Mayor David Briley utilized the Office of New Americans via an executive order to track and report on instances when Nashville Metro employees or agents received requests to assist in enforcing immigration law and monitor developing immigration policies. Briley wrote the executive order in response to a Tennessee law that prohibits state and local governments from refusing to enforce federal immigration law or cooperate with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
The order further prohibited Metro government employees or agents from cooperating with the federal government in enforcing immigration law and called on the Tennessee General Assembly to the state law in question.
About one month later, former Nashville Mayor John Cooper rescinded his predecessor’s executive order and called it “flawed,” according to a news release. Cooper cited a loss of more than $1 million in grants, “insufficient clarity,” and recent activities by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Agency (ICE) in Nashville for rescinding the order.
According to data from the American Immigration Council, Tennessee holds upwards of 370,000 illegal immigrants, about five percent of the state’s total population. 134,000 of those, the council reported, are “undocumented,” though such numbers are difficult to track.
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Matthew Giffin is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Matthew on X/Twitter.
Photo “Jacky Gomez” by Mayor Freddie O’Connell.
They do know that “indigenous” means native to and born in a place? I am an indigenous Tennessean, born in Nashville and native to Middle Tennessee as were my parents, grandparents and great grand parents.
Freddie is a delusional Wack job that might be more at home working out of Bellevue in NYC.
He already went to bed with Mr. Straw Purchase and parrots’ other communists by calling international criminals “New Americans”.
There is an immigration process they can go through as others have.
Freddie is also illiterate when it comes to the US Constitution and History.
Here is a little fact, Freddie. Siberians crossed to the North American Continent anywhere from 25,000 years to 100,000 years ago. Many of the Indian Nations have Siberian DNA.
Do not disrespect the Nobel Indian Nations by using the low generic word Indigenous.
It an insult.
…focused on recruiting foreign immigrants to work in metro Nashville government.”
this is just wrong…..and don’t tell me it’s diversity….
surprised he nominated someone following the legal process