Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell on Friday reportedly signed an executive order to establish protocols for various Metro Nashville departments to provide the mayor’s office with any information deemed “immigration communications,” which might reflect forthcoming federal immigration enforcement in the city.
O’Connell appears to have actually amended his Executive Order 30, which is titled Communications Between Federal Immigration Authorities and the Metropolitan Government. The order mandates any communication to Nashville police, fire, emergency management, or emergency communications personnel by federal immigration law enforcement, or their federal agencies, be reported to the Mayor’s Office of New Americans.
The order also specifies that any communications between federal officials and “a Metro non-emergency services department or office,” be reported to the mayor’s office.
Notably, Nashville Director of Law Wally Dietz recently confirmed that a DHS official called emergency services in Nashville to request additional patrols outside a federal facility days ahead of the recent immigration enforcement operation between Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but that the request was not shared with Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) until the time the DHS official requested.
This led activists and members of the Metro council to demand changes at a meeting last Thursday, specifically to require require information sharing on potential federal immigration enforcement between various city departments. Emergency services confirmed such changes were on the way.
“Certainly, hindsight being 20/20, we are having a lot of conversations now with the mayor’s office, and with Legal, to determine what sort of notifications we can put in place,” said Metro Emergency Communications Director Stephen Martini last week.
Under the mayor’s executive order, notification of the communication between the DHS official and the police dispatcher would have been required to be submitted to the mayor’s office within one business day.
The executive order also implements a training program for the Metropolitan Department of Human Resources, Department of Law, and Mayor’s Office of New Americans to train other Nashville employees on what is considered immigration information that must be reported to O’Connell.
Activists have nonetheless decried the immigration enforcement, including the Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC), whose executive director accused THP and ICE of “kidnapping our people off the street based on nothing but the color of their skin.”
Despite their opposition to the agency under the Trump administration, TIRRC indicated it would assist ICE in 2022, when the Biden administration sought its assistance with a plot to release thousands of illegal immigrants into Tennessee from a detention facility in Louisiana.
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Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Image “Mayor Freddie O’Connell” by Mayor Freddie O’Connell.
Should be an airtight case against him now, to arrest him and get him and those around him out of office! Thanks for making things so easy soon to be ex-mayor!
Nashville mayor is the worst of the worst by violating state and federal law and needs to be arrested.
DOJ come get this guy and take our council also.
Both the State and Federal Attorneys General need to step in and arrest and remove O’Connell from office immediately. That he is aiding and abetting foreign nationals committing crimes is beyond appalling.
sounds like a sanctuary city. maybe the feds need to reconsider any federal funds going to Nashville and comrade freddy.
why are they going to such lengths to help people break the law?
I pray the feds know about this as it is clearly interfering with ICE and DHS. I cannott think of a more deserving group of marxists that should made an example of.
At this point I wouldn’t set foot in Nashville. Like so many other once great cities, its become a crime infested liberal cesspool. Hey Mayor Freddie O’Connell, pound sand.
Just what Nashville needs, a traitor for a mayor.