(The Center Square) – Debates over the National Guard presence in Memphis and immigration were the top public safety stories in Tennessee for 2025.
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum of understanding in September to allow the guard’s presence in the city with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and the state’s U.S. Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty at his side.
The National Guard is part of the Memphis Safe Street Task Force, a state and federal partnership that includes $100 million in state grants.
“This has to work,” Lee said when announcing the initiative. “We all believe very much that this is the moment and time we have been given to collaboratively work together for the people of Memphis.”
Democrats and Republicans are split on the National Guard’s presence in Memphis.
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, Memphis City Councilmember J.B. Smiley Jr., Shelby County Commissioners Henri E. Brooks and Erika Sugarmon, and state Reps. G.A. Hardaway, D-Memphis, and Gabby Salinas, D-Memphis, filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the guard’s presence.
A Davidson County chancellor issued a temporary injunction in November, but allowed the guard to remain in place while the state appealed the decision.
The case will be heard by the Tennessee Court of Appeals on March 5.
Salinas told The Center Square in an interview that the process of deploying the guard was not transparent.
“When we heard rumors about the deployment of the National Guard here at the office, you know, I wrote my first letter to the governor asking him more details, how many people, what is specifically are they going to be doing?” Salinas said. “What is how they’re measuring success? When are they going to be leaving? At what point do they say, ‘OK, we achieved what we were out to achieve,’ none of which those questions were ever answered.”
Sen. Brent Taylor, R- Memphis, said the National Guard’s presence has made a difference.
“I’m hearing from constituents every day that said, ‘We swore off Grizzlies games, we swore off plays at the Orpheum, we quit going downtown to the restaurants,'” Taylor said in an interview. “We had a lot of downtown restaurants closed because, look, nobody really thought they were going to be murdered when they went downtown, but they didn’t want to come out from a Grizzlies game (University of Memphis) basketball game or a play at the Orpheum and find their car broken into and all the hassle that goes along with that.”
Tennessee is not a border state, but it became a part of the national debate on immigration after it was revealed that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was stopped by law enforcement in 2022 while traveling through the state.
The Trump administration mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia to El Salvador due to an administrative error, according to previous reports. Garcia was living in Maryland and had been arrested on suspicion of involvement in MS-13 in 2019, after immigrating illegally to the United States as a teenager with his parents around 2011. An immigration judge granted him “withholding of removal” in 2019, believing his life would be in danger if he were returned to El Salvador.
Garcia was charged with human smuggling in connection with the traffic stop. Garcia was driving an SUV with eight passengers. One of the officers believed that he was smuggling them, remarking that he was “hauling these people for money.”
Currently, Garcia is not detained as his case moves through the courts.
State lawmakers approved a new Centralized Immigration Enforcement Division. Lee appointed Ryan Hubbard, a former federal immigration enforcement agent, to lead the division shortly after the law went into effect in July.
