84% of Tennesseans support deporting undocumented immigrants with a criminal record, according to a new poll by Vanderbilt University. But when asked if they want to deport undocumented immigrants without criminal records, support drops dramatically, to just over 50%.
A small-town church leader in East Tennessee says she sees the nuances of that poll play out in her own conservative community.
Colleen Jacobs works at St. Patrick Catholic Church in Morristown, Tennessee. The town is around 25% Hispanic and 67% white, and the church serves much of the local Spanish-speaking immigrant population. In 2018, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided a nearby worksite and deported 97 people. Some in the community stepped up to help their immigrant neighbors.
“There were even things where people would donate money or goods or whatever, and they would want to do it hidden,” she said. “So they would say, ‘I’m going to give you this to help the situation, but I just don’t want my name attached to it.’”
More: Ongoing coverage of immigration from WPLN
In the past three presidential elections, Hamblen county, where Morristown is located, voted between 75 and 80 percent for Donald Trump. But Jacobs says some of her neighbors felt sympathetic toward immigrants they saw around town.
“I think we had a perfect positive storm, if you will, of being just small enough that even if you didn’t know somebody personally that was being subjected to the terror of what happened during the ICE raid, you probably knew somebody who knew them,” she said. “Your kid’s soccer coach, or, you know, the person you sat next to at church, or Bible study, or you knew from the grocery store.”
Jacobs says her church will serve immigrant communities regardless of Morristown’s political situation. St. Patrick is teaming up with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition to offer pro bono legal aid.
