NASHVILLE, Tenn. \u2013 Four Memphis residents are suing U.S. and Tennessee officials, saying they have been harassed, arrested and physically mistreated for engaging in activities protected by the First Amendment such as observing and recording law enforcement agents in their city.<\/p>\n
A lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court targets the Memphis Safe Task Force<\/a>, comprising agents from 13 federal agencies that President Donald Trump ordered to the city to fight crime alongside Tennessee State Troopers and the Tennessee National Guard<\/a>. <\/p>\n Since late September, hundreds of federal, state and local law enforcement personnel tied to the task force have made traffic stops, served warrants and searched for fugitives in the majority Black city of about 610,000 people. The lawsuit says the task force has conducted over 120,000 traffic stops. <\/p>\n “In the professed name of crime control, Task Force agents have stopped, menaced, and arrested Memphians engaging in routine, day-to-day activities,\u201d the lawsuit states. \u201cIn response, Memphians encountering Task Force agents in public, including Plaintiffs, have stopped to gather information about and record Task Force activities.\u201d <\/p>\n The U.S. Department of Justice released a statement on Wednesday in response to the lawsuit.<\/p>\n \u201cIn eight months, the Memphis Safe Task Force has made over 9,000 arrests, including 951 known gang members, and located 150 missing children, drastically increasing public safety in the Memphis community. The Department will not tolerate any action that puts our law enforcement officers at risk. We strongly disagree with the allegations in the lawsuit and remain committed to fair, impartial, and professional law enforcement practices to keep Memphians and the American people safe.\u201d <\/p>\n Hunter Demster, a Memphis resident and plaintiff, says he regularly sees the task force stopping cars in his neighborhood, which has a large Hispanic population. In one interaction, he was surrounded by task force agents after he filmed a traffic stop and told the people in the car that they had a right not to speak to police. <\/p>\n \u201cIt is a terrifying feeling,” Demster said. \u201cI did nothing illegal. I used my First Amendment protected rights to hold up a phone and say some \u2018know your rights\u2019 information.\u201d<\/p>\n Scarlet Kim, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberty Union\u2019s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said the Tennessee law is written so broadly that officers have wide discretion to invoke it against observers even when the observers are not impeding their actions. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen observers go to the scene of task force activity and they are observing, they\u2019re gathering information,” Kim said. \u201cThey are picking up their phones and cameras and documenting what\u2019s happening. That\u2019s all core protected First Amendment activity. And it\u2019s not a basis for the government to essentially react in the way that they\u2019re reacting.\u201d<\/p>\n Federal officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, former Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, have visited Memphis<\/a> to praise the task force<\/a>. Miller in October predicted the surge in law enforcement would make the city \u201csafer than any of you could ever possibly imagine\u201d and that \u201cbusinesses and investment are going to pour in, and Memphis will be richer than ever before.\u201d <\/p>\n The task force is part of a larger effort by Trump to use National Guard troops and surge federal law enforcement in cities, particularly ones controlled by Democrats. Following troop deployments in the District of Columbia<\/a> and Los Angeles<\/a>, he referred to Portland, Oregon, as \u201cwar-ravaged\u201d and threatened apocalyptic force<\/a> in Chicago. Speaking last year to U.S. military leaders in Virginia, Trump proposed using cities as training grounds<\/a> for the armed forces.<\/p>\n The lawsuit accuses task force agents of systematically retaliating against the four plaintiffs and other members of the public engaged in similar observations. It claims the threats and harassment are the \u201cdirect result of federal policy\u201d that views observing federal agents performing their duties in public as a threat of harm to those agents. The lawsuit also claims that federal and state officials have failed to train their agents not to retaliate against citizens engaged in activities protected by the First Amendment. <\/p>\n The lawsuit asks the court to declare that retaliation against the plaintiffs for observing and recording law enforcement activity is unconstitutional and to prohibit the agents from further retaliation. It also targets a Tennessee law that requires observers to stand at least 25 feet (7.6 meters) away from law enforcement officers, if they are warned to do so, or face arrest. The suit asks the court to declare unconstitutional the use of the \u201cHalo Law\u201d against defendants who are not interfering with agents or impeding their duties.<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE, Tenn. \u2013 Four Memphis residents are suing U.S. and Tennessee officials, saying they have been harassed, arrested…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70260,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[12,4087,18,10666,681],"class_list":{"0":"post-70259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pete-hegseth","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-pam-bondi","10":"tag-pete-hegseth","11":"tag-stephen-miller","12":"tag-u-s-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116570350192555917","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}