This story is produced in collaboration with the Institute for Public Service Reporting.
It was close to one a.m. on Sunday, Aug. 31, when state and federal agents swarmed into a Memphis nightclub frequented by Hispanic residents.
“We were sitting at the bar, with a friend,” said an employee who asked to remain anonymous. “And suddenly they said, ‘Hands up!’ and that we were all under arrest.”
What happened that night at El Corralón, a restaurant and bar in the Berclair-Grahamwood area, would send ripples of fear and disgust through Memphis’ immigrant community. The operation appears to be one of the single-largest roundups of undocumented people nationwide since the Trump administration began its immigration crackdown 19 months ago.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has since characterized El Corralón as a crime den but has released few details. DHS says it arrested 121 people, releasing criminal histories for five of the arrestees but nothing on the other 116.
Questions — and anger — abound in the Hispanic community.
Speaking in Spanish, the employee said federal immigration agents rounded up patrons and employees alike, corralling them in the middle of the dance floor.
“That’s when many women and men began screaming, almost fainting, crying,” she said. “Women were screaming for their children.”
“Si no eran gritos, eran oraciones,” the employee said: If it wasn’t screaming, it was praying.
Then the questions started.
“(Agents) began taking us out one by one, handcuffing some, and began asking: ‘Where are you from? Do you have papers? Do you have a work permit?’ ” the employee said.
The woman, from Central America, keeps immigration documents with her. She and three others were released at the scene.
But a close relative was not so fortunate.
“I had to pick up her four children. That person doesn’t have anyone else but me,” the employee said. One of the children is a 2-year-old, she said. The father was previously deported.
The immigrant rights group Vecindarios 901 says at least 16 children lost one parent in the raid.
The early Sunday morning raid appears to be the second-largest ICE operation in any city, nationwide, on a single day in 2026. Data analyzed by The Institute shows only Florence, Arizona had more immigration arrests, 157, in one day.
In a press release Tuesday, DHS said the raid was part of “Operation Corral Light,” a crackdown on “illegal alien crime.’’
“Through Operation Corral Light, ICE arrested more than 120 illegal aliens in a single day, including child abusers, drug traffickers, and violent assailants,’’ DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin is quoted as saying in the release. “Under the Trump Administration, the brave men and women of ICE have been unleashed to remove illegal aliens from our communities and make America safe again.”
The release named five people who were arrested in the raid, providing pictures and criminal histories ranging from larceny to assault and prostitution. But the lack of information or updates about the 116 others has sparked outcry in Memphis as immigrant-rights advocates try to locate arrestees to help console grieving family members.
According to Vecindarios 901, so far 113 of the arrestees have been located; eight are still unaccounted for, according to the organization’s searches on DHS’s immigrant arrestee locator website.
Mayor Paul Young said Memphis Police Department officers were present “to assist with traffic and crowd control” but did not help with the arrests. In a statement, he called the operation “unsettling.”
For community activist Gisela Guerrero, who questions the need to arrest so many people, the operation is deeply troubling.
“Any person is meant to have a right against illegal search and seizure and detainment,” Guerro said, “and everybody has a right to due process, and all of those rights are being violated in this case.”
Others, like activist Jose Salazar, who rushed to the scene, called the raid excessive.
“They didn’t have to take the whole establishment,” Salazar said. “I mean, if they had a warrant, they could have just shut down the business, taken the owner, and dealt with it a whole different way.”
Lucas Cameron-Vaughn, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said search warrants issued to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for a drugs and gambling investigation typically would not give ICE the power to arrest an entire club full of people.
But there’s been a pattern of agencies doing authorized work under state law “and then ICE and immigration enforcement swooping in and trying to ride on that authority that they have when there’s actually no clear legal authority for ICE to do so,” Cameron-Vaughn said.
The Institute reached out to TBI and ICE for comment on Cameron-Vaughn’s assertion. Neither agency has immediately responded to that question.
Since the raid, community members have been delivering food and support to families with missing parents.
So far, the El Corralón employee now taking care of four children only knows that their mother was sent to Alabama.
“I haven’t been able to talk to her. I don’t know if she doesn’t have my number because, as far as I understand —someone told me —she thinks I’m under arrest too,” the employee said.
