ICE officers came for a Tennessee man. His neighbors stepped in to stop them.
When US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers tried to take a Tennessee man into custody early Monday morning, the man's neighbors stepped up to stop them, CNN affiliates WTVF and WZTV reported.
An ICE vehicle had followed the man's van, trying to pull it over, and then blocked it in when the van driver pulled up to a house in Hermitage, near Nashville, the affiliates said. The driver alerted immigrants rights advocates and neighbors, and they rallied, bringing the man and his son - who was in the van with him - water, gas and food so they could stay in the van and avoid possible detention, the affiliates reported.
The standoff lasted for hours. Nashville police were called, but stood by "to keep the peace if necessary," the police department said in a statement.
At some point, the neighbors formed a human chain around the man and his son, who weren't identified to the media, allowing them to get into a house, and later to get from the house to a car and drive away.
"I was real scared about what was going on," said neighbor Felishadae Young in an interview posted on Facebook by CNN affiliate WZTV. "It put a lot of fear in me, because it could be me, it could be my family. It could be anybody. It could be your neighbors, just like it was my neighbor today." Young said she had known the family for 14 years.
"ICE officers chose to depart the scene today without making an arrest to de-escalate the situation," ICE spokesman Bryan Cox told CNN in an email. Cox said he wouldn't say "who the agency's target or targets may have been so as to not compromise a potential future operation that would seek to arrest the individual at a different time and place."
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