Federal officials launch crime hotline for Memphis public housing residents

Tennessee National Guard patrol different sections of Memphis., They are carrying side arms and tasers.

Photographs by John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout

Federal officials announced a new crime hotline for residents of Memphis public housing Monday, the latest facet of a task force that deployed federal and state law enforcement in the city starting in early October.

U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner said the hotline is meant to provide residents of HUD-funded housing a direct line to report “criminals, illegal aliens, sex offenders, human traffickers and those guilty of gang activity, drug distribution and fraud.”

Calls will go to the HUD Office of Inspector General, which investigates fraud, waste and abuse in government-subsidized housing. The office will coordinate with the U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, and state and local law enforcement, Turner said.

Turner specifically singled out immigrants lacking permanent legal status in his remarks. 

“We will clean up our public housing so that they can fulfill their function of sanctuaries for the most vulnerable people in our country, where American citizens can get a temporary hand up and then gain independence from government help — specifically American citizens,” he said. 

“Illegal aliens have no place in public housing,” Turner continued. “It’s outrageous that people who should not be here come across our borders and now usurp spots in housing units that should support American people.”

Immigrants without permanent legal status are ineligible for federal housing programs under current federal law, with narrow exceptions for emergency or disaster services, according to the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant advocacy organization.

Mixed-status families — families with members of different immigration statuses — can still receive housing assistance from HUD, so long as the household has at least one eligible member. The amount of assistance these families receive is prorated, so a household with ineligible members will receive only a portion of the rent subsidy that a household would receive if every member were eligible, according to a HUD report published in 2019.

These mixed-status families make up less than 1% of all households receiving assistance in the United States, according to the Urban Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. HUD’s 2019 report records roughly 25,000 mixed-status households, with the majority consisting of three eligible members and one ineligible member.

Federal, state officials tout task force numbers, but do not provide detailed data

U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said Monday that the Memphis Safe Task Force has tallied more than 3,100 arrests, seized 501 firearms, and located 121 children reported as missing. Federal charges have been filed against 157 people, Bondi said.

Gov. Bill Lee and U.S. Sens. Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn also heaped praise on the task force, which was convened by the Trump administration in September.

But various agencies involved in the task force, including the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol, have yet to publicly release the names of all of the individuals arrested under the task force’s purview, or provide details about their charges.

Arrest counts provided by the Department of Justice and the U.S. Marshals Service initially included a breakdown by category, including homicides, sex offenses, narcotics, firearms, probation/parole violations, ICE administrative warrants, “other” and “warrants.” In the task force’s first week, ICE administrative warrants made up roughly 25% of reported arrests. The agencies have since stopped providing counts for immigration-related arrests.

A data dashboard published by the Shelby County General Sessions Court shows that, while the number of new cases involving traffic violations and drug charges has risen since the task force began, the number of new cases involving violent crime charges has fallen. 

The number of warrants served has increased, and University of Memphis Center for Community Research and Evaluation Associate Director Jonathan Bennett, who worked on the dashboard, told MLK50: Justice Through Journalism earlier this month that arrests connected to pre-existing warrants are “likely a key focus of the task force’s efforts with respect to violent offenders.”

The task force cleared more than 1,000 warrants as of Nov. 9, according to the U.S. Marshals Service. The agency periodically posts news releases announcing task force arrests for select individuals facing charges involving drugs, violent crime and illegal firearms, among other charges.

The Department of Homeland Security provided names and photographs of 11 “criminal illegal aliens” that it described as “some of the worst of the worst” arrested by the task force in October, but recent reporting from the Institute for Public Service Reporting shows some of the individuals were misidentified and others had charges that were unable to be verified through an independent search of court records. 

One of the people identified was Christian worship singer Delmar Gomez, whom authorities falsely claimed had been arrested on an aggravated assault charge. Gomez’ record shows only minor motor vehicle violations.

Officials address cost and strain on criminal justice system

Hagerty said he wants the Memphis Safe Task Force to act as a template for law enforcement surges in other U.S. cities. He acknowledged that additional funding will be needed to sustain the operation. 

A federal memo submitted in a legal challenge to the National Guard’s presence in Memphis estimated salaries and benefits for up to 1,000 National Guard members present in Memphis as part of the task force could cost $226 million per year. Additional costs associated with the task force are unclear. A Nashville chancellor temporarily blocked the Guard’s presence, but her ruling remains on hold while the state appeals.

Hagerty addressed Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who will “have a big job in this as a member of the Appropriations Committee.”

As speaker, Sexton can sit on any House committee, but he does not have a fixed seat on the House Appropriations Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Bud Hulsey, a Kingsport Republican.

“At the federal level, we’re going to be doing everything that we can to make certain that we have the proper resources going forward so that we’re able to maintain the safety of Memphis, to bring back the greatness of this wonderful city,” Hagerty said.

Representatives for Hagerty and Sexton did not respond to a request for clarification on these remarks.

The influx of arrests is straining local court systems and adding to overcrowding at the Shelby County Criminal Justice Center, according to District Attorney General Steve Mulroy. 

The task force has “substantially increased the caseload of our office,” Mulroy wrote in a Nov. 21 newsletter. “Daily General Sessions Court dockets are up about 50%. We’ve started to see significant rises in other areas as well. We’re reassigning prosecutors from regular duty to Traffic Court duty to deal with the deluge of traffic cases soon to hit our court.”

Several prosecutors have volunteered to work evenings, weekends and extra hours, Mulroy reported.

Gadyaces Serralta, director of the U.S. Marshals Service, said Monday that the task force is “taking every case we can federal” in an attempt to relieve some of the strain on local courts. 

Serralta also said that criminal cases are “taking too long to see their way through the wheels of justice” in state courts, and his agency is “open to working with the state prosecutor’s office in order to shorten that period of time.”

“If we don’t speed up the process, it’s going to continue to back up,” he said. “Because we can’t put them through the criminal justice system does not mean that it’s a free pass to commit crimes, so we’re going to keep arresting folks. They keep committing crimes, we’re going to keep arresting them.”