MEMPHIS — The alert went out to volunteers at about 8 p.m. on a Friday: a woman hiding in a closet with her twin toddlers was on the phone to a community hotline unsure what to do as dozens of federal and local law enforcement officers converged outside, demanding entry.
Yuleiny Escobar, a volunteer for Vecindarios 901, which operates the hotline, hustled over to the woman’s home, located in the same heavily Latino Berclair neighborhood as her own.
A tow truck driver blocked the road leading to the house at the request of law enforcement, blaring the pro-police anthem, “Bad Boys.” By the time Escobar reached the home, a Border Patrol officer and a U.S. Marshal each held a toddler in one arm as their mother was placed inside an unmarked SUV. Holes in the home’s windows marked entry points for chemical agents that had been thrown inside to force the family out, neighbors told Escobar.
Escobar pulled out her phone and began recording.
“These are scenes people need to see, as a reflection of our state and our country right now,” Escobar said.
Thousands of Memphians now rely on the videos, photos and eyewitness reports by volunteers with Vencendarios 901 — V901 for short — to chronicle the activities of the Memphis Safe Task Force, the multi-agency law enforcement force launched Sept. 15 by President Donald Trump.
V901 was established as a rapid response network to report on Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities during the first Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. In Trump’s second term, the all-volunteer V901 has kicked into high gear.
Seven years ago, V901 received three to five calls per day from Memphis residents reporting immigration enforcement activities to its hotline, said Hunter Demster, a longtime local activist who co-founded the effort seven years ago with Maria Oceja, a community organizer.
“Now we’re getting up to 140 calls a day,” he said. “The vast majority of calls are people scared to leave their houses or pulled over. But we’ve also pushed this number out at community events and, now, the average person sees something and calls us.”
Tracking the task force
V901 dispatchers answer calls while volunteers drive two-hour patrol shifts to confirm reported Task Force actions before they are sent out as text blasts and social media posts. The information serves both as a warning to avoid locations with a heavy law enforcement presence and an ongoing documentation of Task Force activity.
About 100 people a month have attended V901 volunteer training since the Task Force launched, Demster said. The group is diverse, but Demster said he has noticed more older white women and individuals motivated by their religious faith have turned out to help in recent months.
Hundreds of videos and photos posted by volunteers to the group’s Instagram and Facebook pages have captured traffic stops, forcible home entries and arrests that have taken place since September.
V901 volunteers continue to stay in touch with families impacted by an arrest, linking them to counseling, food pantries, legal assistance and help navigating the online Immigration and Customs Enforcement locator system to track detained loved ones and add money to their inmate accounts, Demster said.
Volunteers are also trained to try to obtain car keys after traffic stops to ensure vehicles get to family members instead of being towed by private companies that typically refuse to release a car to anyone who is not the registered owner.
The day after the mother with toddlers was detained was her twins’ birthday, Demster said. V901 volunteers bought them presents. Their mother was later released with an ankle monitor and reunited with her children, he said. The woman’s 16-year-old niece, driven home from the laundromat by a family friend in a car that law enforcement pursued to the home that night, remains in ICE custody and is subject to deportation, he said.
Task Force targets Hispanic neighborhoods
On a different Friday night, just before Thanksgiving, Demster and fellow volunteer Lucii Chambless took a shift driving the streets of the Berclair neighborhood watching for signs of Task Force activity.
A half dozen members of the Tennessee National Guard strolled up and down a sidewalk in front of a busy Kroger store on Summer Avenue, the main commercial route through the Berclair neighborhood. Guard personnel lingered in front of a van parked in an empty lot in the hip and artsy Cooper-Young neighborhood. In neither location would Guard personnel respond to questions about their assignment, referring questions to a public information officer.
The National Guard, whose presence in the city is being challenged in court by the Shelby County mayor and other elected Democrats, typically serves in a support role, Demster said.
Task Force law enforcement actions follow a pattern that distinguishes them from other police work, Demster said.
Task Force stops typically are initiated by Memphis police, state troopers and Shelby County Sheriff deputies, while Homeland Security Investigations and ICE officers either ride along with them or follow in unmarked dark-colored vehicles.
Task Force traffic stops that Demster has observed have included up to ten unmarked vehicles driven by federal agents identifiable by their uniforms.
Most of the stops reported by V901 volunteers appear to be aimed at drivers in two of Memphis’ biggest Hispanic neighborhoods: Hickory Hill and Berclair, he said.
The Memphis Safe Task Force has made over 3,100 arrests, 1,900 of them for nonviolent offenses, and initiated more than 35,000 traffic stops since Oct. 1, according to a dashboard maintained by the city that has received community pushback for its lack of detail.
The data made public by the city and U.S. Marshals office, which spearheads the task force, does not include the locations of arrests or demographic data on individuals arrested. Task Force officials initially reported immigration arrest numbers but have since stopped providing that data.
In the absence of data, Demster said V901 volunteers said they have witnessed immigration arrests as a key priority.
“They may say this isn’t strictly an ICE operation, but when you flood the two largest Hispanic communities in the city, we see it’s an ICE operation under the false pretenses of we’re here to stop violent criminals,” he said.
This article was originally published by the Tennessee Lookout.
