Immigration arrests disrupt lives and businesses in Oxford

By Georgie Pease | Originally published by Mississippi Today

OXFORD – After a wave of immigration enforcement arrests in and around Oxford in the first two weeks of June, immigrant communities faced a void of information from authorities as they confronted the emergencies and disruptions to lives, families and businesses caused by the detentions.

The lack of transparency from authorities is “the first symptom of a huge problem,” said Mauricio Calvo, president of Latino Memphis, an organization that supports immigrant families with information and resources. Often when detentions occur, he said, “we don’t know how many, we don’t know who, we don’t know where they are – it could be a bunch of different detention centers.”

Witnesses in Oxford filmed and photographed ICE agents in unmarked SUVs arresting predominantly Latino commuters at intersections and at traffic stops. A Memphis, Tennessee-based grassroots network, Vecindarios901, found that at least 24 people were detained. Many were held briefly at Madison County Detention Center in central Mississippi, then quickly transferred to larger Immigration and Custom Enforcement detention facilities in Louisiana and Alabama, including a privately run prison in Jena, Louisiana, with a documented history of torture and abuse. 

For many people trying to locate friends and family who were detained, Vecindarios901 was a critical line of information. The network primarily responds to arrests in and around Memphis, where immigrant communities have been main targets of the Memphis Safe Task Force, a joint operation by federal agencies, including ICE and the National Guard, in collaboration with local authorities. (President Donald Trump’s September 2025 memorandum established the force to “end street and violent crime,” but the federal agents have been accused of repeated violence and harassment.)  

More than an hour’s drive southeast of Memphis, Oxford has not been a regular target of federal immigration authorities, but Vecindarios901 also monitors the area due to its proximity to its home base. Dispatchers said the arrests were the largest scale enforcement operation they have recorded near Oxford since September. 

Bailey Martin Holloway, spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, wrote that since the U.S. Department of Homeland Security – which includes ICE – was the lead agency in the Oxford operation, “any information would need to be released by them.”

ICE, the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department and the Madison County Sheriff’s Department did not respond to questions about the number of people detained or where they were taken. Oxford Police Department spokesperson Breck Jones said city police were not involved in the operations and received no information about the arrests. Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Nena Garza, who uses the alias that translates to “Dear Heron” to avoid retribution from authorities for her work, is one of Vecindarios901’s trained searchers. They have become experts at using a variety of online resources to help families in the region locate relatives in detention. The tools for finding detainees exist, Nena Garza said, but “not many people know how to find them or navigate them.” 

She and other searchers glean information by comparing information from county detention dockets, a privately run platform designed for families to transfer money to prisoners, ICE’s detainee locator, and updates from local law enforcement on the Mobile Patrol App.

However, the sheer number of immigration detentions in the region make it impossible for the searchers to address every case. “There are too many,” Nena Garza said. “If I leave the office and I have my laptop or my iPad, I’m always looking for people, checking where they might be.”

At a roadside restaurant in the outskirts of Oxford, the owner’s husband said he has been juggling his full-time construction job with managing the restaurant since his wife, a Honduran citizen, was detained in Memphis in early June. Then, ICE came to Oxford and arrested the son of one of the restaurant’s employees. 

“They’ve taken so many of my friends and acquaintances, with the raids and the traffic stops that they put up,” said the owner’s husband, who asked not to be identified to avoid being targeted by immigration authorities. “We’re left mourning because many of the people we knew aren’t here anymore.”

He said his wife has lived in the U.S. for 16 years, raised a family here, runs two businesses and was close to getting her green card. Fulfilling her responsibilities has been a challenge for him and the restaurant’s employees, especially as they worry about what loved ones are facing in detention centers. He said authorities have not given his wife her prescribed medication, and she keeps losing weight.

“I’m afraid they’re going to let her die,” he said. “It destroys my heart.” 

Nena Garza said that, beyond disappearances, the detentions create a host of emergencies that support networks scramble to address – including finding care for children left without guardians, helping families whose principal earner has been detained pay rent and bills, and organizing rides to school or appointments when families are left without cars or afraid to leave their homes. Recovering vehicles that are abandoned then towed after their drivers are detained can cost relatives hundreds to thousands of dollars. But the principal harm, she says, is the emotional trauma.

“The community is damaged and in pain because of this,” she said. “The government used force and its authority to terrorize the community.”

Organizations supporting immigrant communities are bracing for a possible increase in immigration enforcement operations after Wednesday, when state legislation goes into effect requiring all Mississippi counties to sign 287(g) cooperation agreements with ICE. As of June, 24 of Mississippi’s 82 counties have signed such agreements, as well as several municipalities, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Public Safety. 

According to publicly available ICE data, around 300 immigration arrests occurred monthly in Mississippi in late 2025 and early 2026, an increase from roughly 200 per month throughout most of 2025. Paula Merchant, who directs a Jackson-based nonprofit that supports immigrant families, said in Mississippi an increase in detentions of commuters on highways, city streets and at gas stations was visible starting in November. Mississippi Today reported on this surge in arrests, which occurred around the same time DHS launched an immigration enforcement operation targeting southern Louisiana and Mississippi. 

According to ICE’s Strategic Plan, detentions target “individuals who present a threat to national security, public safety or the integrity of the U.S. immigration system.” However, the vast majority of people arrested by ICE have no criminal convictions, according to the American Immigration Council. Furthermore, the unprecedented speed of policy changes and long-standing interpretations of immigration law under the second Trump administration – including re-detention policies and terminations of Temporary Protected Status – mean that many people currently being detained were complying with immigration procedures until “the rules changed under them anyway,” according to Calvo. 

Nena Garza lived through mass-immigration raids at Arkansas chicken plants and Memphis’ service industry in the late 1990s, but she said the targeting of immigrants under the second Trump administration is the “most terrible” she has experienced.

“The community is damaged and in pain because of this situation. We’re talking about the government using force and its authority to terrorize the community,” she said. “You go to bed with your heart crushed by everything you’ve seen during the day.” 

But she also said that in 30 years working to support immigrant communities, she has never seen so many people mobilize to respond to the detentions, their ramifications and other anti-immigrant policies. “As a community, we have to be strong, we have to protect ourselves,” she said.

Georgie Pease joined Mississippi Today for a 10-week fellowship through the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She reported from Oxford and Memphis for this story.

This article was originally published by Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Source: Original Article