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Arrests of foreigners double over Memorial Day weekend By Jared Allen, jallen@nashvillecitypaper.com
May 30, 2007

The number of foreign-born persons physically arrested by Metro Police over the Memorial Day weekend was more than twice as high as the average number from a weekend, according to Davidson County Sheriff Daron Hall, who is responsible for screening all foreign-born arrestees for federal immigration violations.

Although Hall and his deputies have no police powers in Nashville, they do have the ability to run immigration checks on every foreign-born person brought to the jail by Metro Police.

And through that ability — as a result of a law enforcement sharing arrangement with the federal government known commonly as 287(g) — the Sheriff’s Office identified as being illegal aliens 92 percent — 61 people — of the 66 foreign-born persons physically arrested by Metro Police last weekend.

That number is in line with what the Sheriff’s Office has seen every week since it began running immigration checks through 287(g) last month.

But what was twice as high as normal was the percentage of total arrestees who were foreign-born.

Over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, a total of 299 persons were physically arrested and brought into the Metro jail for booking.

Preliminary figures from the Sheriff’s Office show that 66 of those individuals — or 22 percent of the total — were born outside the United States.

Since 287(g) was implemented, the average number of foreign-born arrestees has steadily hovered around 10 percent of the total arrest population. In fact, 10 percent was the number the Sheriff’s Office used as an estimate when preparing for the 287(g) program.

At the same time, it is the number both the sheriff as well as immigrants rights advocates say is critical to gauging the full affect of 287(g).

A steady and lasting rise in the number of foreign-born persons arrested as a percentage of the entire arrestee population could be an early sign of racial profiling by the Metro Police Department, or some other phenomenon suggesting that crime among immigrants is on the rise, members of Sheriff Hall’s Immigration Advisory Council have cautioned for months.

At this point, no one is suggesting that Metro Police purposefully arrested more foreign-born persons over the weekend, or that any one factor is responsible for the rise.

“My non-expert opinion is that because it was a holiday where drinking and driving occurs for many, potentially more foreign-born individuals got swept up,â€