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The Tennessee Attorney General's Office announced that efforts by the governor and other state lawmakers were successful and ultimately stopped a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plan to release illegal immigrants, including convicted criminals, into the state.
State Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced Wednesday that after a lawsuit was filed by the AG’s office, ICE was forced to produce previously undisclosed information about the agency’s planned release of thousands of detained migrants, including convicted criminals.
The office said it obtained hundreds of pages of documents that shed light on federal authorities’ since-abandoned plan to transport potentially thousands of "single adult" immigration detainees into Tennessee.
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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced that, after a successful lawsuit by the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office, ICE was forced to produce previously undisclosed information about the agency’s release of thousands of detained migrants, including dangerous convicted criminals. (Jon Michael Raasch/Fox News Digital/AP Photo/George Walker IV)
The findings originate from a 2022 discovery by the governor's office when it learned that ICE had been coordinating with local immigration-rights groups and Nashville officials to release large numbers of detainees into the state before the anticipated termination of the federal government’s Title 42 public health order.
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ICE was forced to produce previously undisclosed information about the agency’s planned release of thousands of detained migrants, including convicted criminals. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)
"The federal government’s single most important job is to keep dangerous people out of our country, and instead it has let killers and rapists illegally cross our border and walk free on our streets," Skrmetti said in a statement.
The records show that ICE’s plan to release migrants into Tennessee was derailed after pushback from Republican Gov. Bill Lee and GOP senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty and was ultimately stopped through successful litigation by the state attorney general's office.
The office said that the information further revealed that although ICE abandoned its failed plan for the mass release of detainees into Tennessee, the agency still released over 7,000 detainees directly from its Louisiana sites at that time, including more than 30 who were assigned ICE’s highest security-threat level.
Central American migrants cross a fence along the southern border fence from Tijuana, Baja California State, Mexico, into the U.S. (Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images)
According to the records, released detainees also had criminal records that included murder, sexual assault, aggravated assault with a weapon, armed robbery, kidnapping, smuggling aliens, drug trafficking, burglary and fraud.
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"While the urgent work to fix our broken immigration system continues in Washington, my office will keep fighting for transparency and accountability," Skrmetti said.
This comes after the Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday that it is recommending more than 100 migrants that it has identified as having possible ties to a violent Venezuelan gang be put on an FBI watchlist after the agency flagged more than 600 with possible ties overall.
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However, officials said they do not believe that all 600 migrants will be confirmed gang members and that many will be relatives, victims or witnesses to crimes by the notorious gang members.
ICE did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Fox News Digital's Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
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