By September 24, 2026, the task force reported 13,020 arrests and more than 2,100 firearms seized. Governor Bill Lee has credited it with a drop in crime, though Memphis crime had already fallen to a 25-year low before the task force arrived. Critics, including city council members and faith leaders, have pointed to deaths during task force operations and the number of arrests for nonviolent offenses, and more than 800 of its arrests have been for immigration violations. Despite that opposition, Attorney General Todd Blanche said at an October 16, 2026 roundtable marking the first anniversary that the operation has no end date and will continue "as long as it takes."
Background
On September 12, 2025, Trump announced that he would send National Guard troops to Memphis, saying that "Memphis is deeply troubled." Three days earlier, the Memphis Police Department had reported that crime in the city had dropped to a 25-year low across major categories. The September 15 memorandum directed the Secretary of Defense to request that the Governor of Tennessee deploy the Tennessee National Guard to Memphis, and ordered the creation of a federal law enforcement task force to work alongside it.
The task force made nine arrests on its first day. On October 1, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller visited Memphis and addressed task force officers. Miller told them they were "unleashed" and said, "We are going to bulldoze the criminal elements in this city." National Guard patrols began on October 10, 2025.
ABC24 counted 13 participating agencies; ProPublica described more than two dozen federal, state and local agencies. City Journal reported more than 2,600 personnel from 33 agencies working in 42 teams across the city's nine police precincts. The Tennessee Highway Patrol leads its traffic enforcement. Tyreece Miller, the U.S. Marshal for the Western District of Tennessee, oversees the operation locally; its commander is Frankie Sanchez.
In October 2025, Governor Lee announced a $100million Downtown Public Safety Grant Fund for the Memphis area to support the task force, part of $175million in state public safety grants. Trump visited Memphis on March 23, 2026, and spoke about the task force.
Arrests
According to figures released on September 24, 2026, the task force had made 13,020 arrests, including 1,443 people it identified as gang members and 845 immigration-related arrests, an average of about 36 arrests a day. Earlier releases reported 131 homicide arrests, 1,363 narcotics arrests and 1,276 firearms arrests. By late February 2026, about 200 juveniles had been arrested.
An analysis by MLK50 and ProPublica of daily arrest reports from October 2025 to early February 2026 found that just over a quarter of more than 5,200 arrests were for violent crimes; most of the rest stemmed from outstanding warrants.
Use of force and deaths
As of July 2026, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) was investigating eight use-of-force incidents involving task force members. Four were fatal shootings, and one of the others involved a person being run over. All four men killed were Black. Of the 18 fatal shootings by officers in Tennessee in 2026 at that point, four involved the task force, and the Tennessee Lookout reported that its use-of-force incidents exceeded those of any other state or local law enforcement agency in Tennessee.
Immigration enforcement
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Homeland Security Investigations take part in the task force. The MLK50 and ProPublica analysis found that the task force arrested more than 800 people deemed to be in the country unlawfully in its first four months. Seventeen of them, about 2%, were also arrested for violent crimes. About 82% of the immigration arrests followed a traffic stop, usually initiated by the Tennessee Highway Patrol for minor violations such as a broken taillight or window tint. Most took place in the Parkway Village neighborhood. A White House spokesperson responded that "every local leader should want to mimic this success." According to NPR, immigration arrests in the Memphis area rose sixfold in the task force's first months, and an analysis by the Institute for Public Service Reporting found that most people arrested had no criminal convictions. On August 30, 2026, a raid on the El Corralón bar detained about 100 people.
Crime statistics
In January 2026, Trump claimed a 77% reduction in crime; the City of Memphis reported a 44% reduction for the fourth quarter of 2025, and Mayor Young noted that crime had already fallen about 25% before the task force began. At the one-year mark, local data showed a 37% drop in serious crime and a 16% drop in calls for service compared with the period before the task force, but the rate had plateaued after the initial decline. Murders were down 37% since the deployment, following a 27% decline from the 2023 peak before it arrived.
