Tennessee AG exposes ICE's plan to release illegal immigrants convicted of dangerous crimes into state

The Tennessee Attorney General's Office announced that efforts by the governor and other state lawmakers were successful and ultimately stopped a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plan to release illegal immigrants, including convicted criminals, into the state.

State Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced Wednesday that after a lawsuit was filed by the AG’s office, ICE was forced to produce previously undisclosed information about the agency’s planned release of thousands of detained migrants, including convicted criminals.

The office said it obtained hundreds of pages of documents that shed light on federal authorities’ since-abandoned plan to transport potentially thousands of "single adult" immigration detainees into Tennessee.

The findings originate from a 2022 discovery by the governor's office when it learned that ICE had been coordinating with local immigration-rights groups and Nashville officials to release large numbers of detainees into the state before the anticipated termination of the federal government’s Title 42 public health order.

"The federal government’s single most important job is to keep dangerous people out of our country, and instead it has let killers and rapists illegally cross our border and walk free on our streets," Skrmetti said in a statement.

The records show that ICE’s plan to release migrants into Tennessee was derailed after pushback from Republican Gov. Bill Lee and GOP senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty and was ultimately stopped through successful litigation by the state attorney general's office.

The office said that the information further revealed that although ICE abandoned its failed plan for the mass release of detainees into Tennessee, the agency still released over 7,000 detainees directly from its Louisiana sites at that time, including more than 30 who were assigned ICE’s highest security-threat level.

According to the records, released detainees also had criminal records that included murder, sexual assault, aggravated assault with a weapon, armed robbery, kidnapping, smuggling aliens, drug trafficking, burglary and fraud.