A federal indictment unsealed in the Middle District of Tennessee charged eight Venezuelan nationals for their roles in recruiting young women from Venezuela and other South and Central American countries, transporting them across the U.S. southern border, and compelling them to engage in commercial sex acts at Nashville-area motels from July 2022 through March 2024. Three defendants face additional sex trafficking conspiracy charges for using force, fraud, and coercion — including invoking ties to the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua — to compel victims into commercial sex acts under a coercive debt scheme.

Law enforcement officials are searching for Tony Lopez-Infante, 32, a Venezuelan national who is in the country illegally, for allegedly striking 21-year-old Zach Carach with a vehicle on May 18 in Nashville while Carach was celebrating his birthday, then fleeing the scene. ICE confirmed Lopez-Infante entered the U.S. in August 2023, has a final deportation order, and federal partners including Homeland Security Investigations are assisting the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department in the manhunt.

ICE's New Orleans Field Office conducted a weeklong enforcement operation in the Nashville area that resulted in 196 arrests of individuals with criminal histories and immigration violations. Among those apprehended were gang affiliates, individuals with prior removals, and people convicted of serious crimes including assault, drug trafficking, and rape. Of the 196 arrested, 95 had prior criminal convictions and 31 were previously deported individuals who reentered the country illegally.

In just three months — October 1 through December 31, 2024 — nearly 3,000 individuals illegally in the country (specifically 2,719) were charged or convicted of criminal offenses across 73 Tennessee counties that submitted data, according to a Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference report. Local law enforcement officers made arrests for a range of crimes including violent assault charges, with those illegally in the country coming primarily from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Venezuela. The data is noted as incomplete, as it does not include submissions from all 95 counties or cover all three months.

States across the country are increasingly setting policy for sheriffs on how much they can cooperate with ICE at local jails, with Iowa, Tennessee, and Texas among those requiring cooperation with detainers. In Tennessee, state law already requires local jails to cooperate with ICE to verify immigration status of individuals taken into custody, and legislation moving through the General Assembly would further require agencies to honor federal detainers. When President Trump began his second term in January 2025, just two Tennessee sheriffs had voluntary ICE agreements, but that number has since grown to 48 local and state law enforcement agencies.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement filed detainers against two individuals living in the country illegally, including a 24-year-old Honduran man facing five counts of attempted murder following a shooting spree in Memphis that injured multiple victims. In a separate case, a second individual was detained in connection with a crime on a New York City subway. ICE lodged the detainers to ensure the individuals remain in custody pending potential removal proceedings.

Bayron Wuifredo Santos-Recarte, a 27-year-old MS-13 member and Honduran national unlawfully present in the United States, was sentenced to 147 months in prison for kidnapping a federal witness in Nashville on November 5, 2023. The victim, who had previously testified against MS-13 members in a racketeering trial, was abducted at gunpoint from a laundromat parking lot and tortured for hours with firearms, hammers, and machetes, sustaining fractured bones, internal bleeding, and a kidney injury. Santos-Recarte pleaded guilty in December 2024 and will be deported following completion of his sentence.