When U.S. Customs and Immigration Officers arrested Felipe Mendez, he was given the choice of losing his two sons to government custody if he tried fighting the deportation or leaving the United States willingly.
He lost his wife and 2-year-old son when tornadoes swept through his trailer park in Nashville in 2023, dropping a neighbor’s mobile home on top of the house he shared with his family of five. Mendez described to reporters at the time he remembered hearing the cries of his wife and children, knowing she and the toddler died when they went quiet.
He came with his family to the United States just five months before the tornadoes from a rural village in Guatemala, fleeing a country where nearly half the population lives in poverty.
Through a translator, Mendez spoke to the Lookout, describing the lack of job opportunities in Guatemala and a desire to stay in Tennessee if he could.
“I’m very sad to be leaving,” he said.
After the tornadoes, Mendez and his sons tried to move forward. He took a job at the fast-food chain Wendy’s. He was driving home from work in May when he was pulled over by a swarm of officers with the Tennessee Highway Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
He was swept up in an immigration sting operation established on Nashville roadways heavily traveled by immigrants by state and federal law enforcement officers with the intention of finding and arresting undocumented residents. ICE announced it had made 196 arrests during the sting meant to apprehend people who “pose a threat to public safety.”
The reason for Mendez’s stop remains unknown, but he was charged with driving without a license, a misdemeanor in Tennessee. The Lookout reached out to the Tennessee Highway Patrol and ICE but neither responded.
An analysis conducted using highway patrol records by the Nashville Banner found that of 607 vehicles stopped during the May operation, 1 out of every 7 included a reason for the stop, “most often citing a non-moving violation, such as window tints, light laws or improperly displayed tags.”
When ICE officers arrested Mendez, they didn’t send him to prison and start a forced deportation process but released him with an ankle monitor when he agreed to leave the United States within five months.
“They gave him no choice but to leave,” said Ashley Warbington, a friend and translator for Mendez.
Tennessee and ties to ICE
President Donald Trump’s administration launched an immigration crackdown nationwide soon after he returned to office in January. One of the most high-profile operations is in Chicago, where local and state government officials have pushed back against what Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker called “attacks on families” by federal agents.
In Tennessee — a state dominated politically by a coalition of suburban and rural Republicans — the response to ICE and federal law enforcement intervention has been different. Before Trump took office, Gov. Bill Lee and state lawmakers created an immigration bureau inside the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.
Lee has embraced the Trump administration’s federal crime task forces, which, among several controversial practices, include ramped-up immigration raids. He sent the state National Guard to Washington, D.C., to assist federal law enforcement and is trying to use it for the same purpose in Memphis.
The state safety department and the correction department both signed agreements with ICE, known as 287(g)s, to work with the federal agency and allow it to train and potentially pay its Tennessee Highway Patrol officers and prison guards. Forty-four local law enforcement agencies also signed up in 2025.
The Trump administration has labeled its efforts as removing “the worst of the worst.” But as the Trump administration has pressured ICE officials to ramp up their deportation efforts, as reported by Axios, caught in the net are people without permanent legal status who genuinely came to America for better opportunities.
Kelly Chieng, who befriended Mendez after his arrest in May, said it’s been “heartbreaking” to watch people who came here to make a better life for their families leave because of the current political climate.
“It’s about creating a culture of fear so they just leave,” Chieng said.
Alexmary Mariño, her husband Orangel and her infant daughter came to Middle Tennessee from Venezuela looking for work. But Warbington, who met Mariño earlier this year, said Orangel was arrested driving home from his construction job and ICE deported him back to Venezuela, leaving Mariño and her baby alone in Dickson.
Mariño, like Mendez, started her own journey back to Venezuela in October at the Tornado Bus Company’s stop in Nashville.
Mendez told Warbington that he made it back to Guatemala and he’s trying to make the best of the situation. His sons are enjoying hanging out with their cousins, Mendez said.
Mariño is still in the midst of her 25-day journey, which will include nearly a dozen stops in various cities as well as a boat ride. Warbington said Mariño is worried about what awaits her.
“She says there is nothing for her there,” Warbington said.
This article was originally published by the Tennessee Lookout.
