Federal Judge Won’t Block Joint ICE-Tennessee Highway Patrol Traffic Stops

Federal agents arrest illegal immigrants in Nashville, Tenn., in May 2025. ICE

A federal judge on Sept. 23 declined to block Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) traffic stops conducted with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), holding that a stop backed by probable cause does not violate the Fourth Amendment even if the real aim is immigration enforcement.

After a hearing on Sept. 22, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger denied a preliminary injunction sought by an advocacy group. The group argued the state police force’s tag-team work with federal agents—first in last year’s Operation Flood the Zone in Nashville and now in Memphis—turns highways into what the group described as de facto immigration checkpoints at which Hispanic motorists are allegedly targeted. The case is known as Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition v. Tennessee Highway Patrol.

The coalition’s lawsuit alleges that for about 18 months, THP and ICE have worked together as a tag team, each using powers the other lacks. THP troopers allegedly pull over drivers they believe may be noncitizens, citing traffic violations. ICE agents riding along or following close behind then question those drivers about their immigration status and arrest them if they find probable cause of a violation. In short, the state supplies the traffic stop; the federal agents supply the immigration interrogation, the lawsuit alleges.

Trauger found the group had standing to bring the challenge but had no chance of winning on Fourth Amendment grounds because of Whren v. United States (1996), which treats an officer’s hidden motive as irrelevant when a traffic stop is otherwise legal. The Fourth Amendment protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government.

The plaintiff has no chance of success on its Fourth Amendment claim, “even if the court accepts as true that THP troopers, pursuant to policy, are pretextually pulling over non-White motorists in Memphis for the purpose of aiding ICE agents to investigate the motorists’ immigration status,” the judge said.

“Supreme Court precedent is clear: a pretextual traffic stop supported by probable cause to believe a traffic violation has occurred does not violate the Fourth Amendment, irrespective of the arresting officers’ subjective intent,” Trauger said.

The judge said the coalition’s second constitutional claim was that THP was choosing whom to stop based on race and ethnicity, which is a 14th Amendment problem, not a Fourth Amendment one. The Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment “prohibits selective enforcement of the law based on considerations such as race,” and it applies “even before a seizure occurs.”

The coalition leaned on data from the first night of a 2025 Nashville sweep—neighborhoods that were about 30 percent Hispanic, but 60 percent of those stopped were Hispanic, and 92 percent of those detained were racial or ethnic minorities—and on figures from the Memphis Safe Task Force, a multi-jurisdictional operation, of about 800 immigration arrests, most of which began with a traffic stop and only about 2 percent of which were tied to violent crime, she said.

Trauger said the figures from the Nashville sweep, which is now over, were only weakly linked to the ongoing multi-agency Memphis operation and that the coalition’s equal protection showing was thin at best.

The ruling leaves the joint patrols in place for the time being while the litigation plays out.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the coalition and THP. No replies were received by publication time.