For the people dressed up in sparkly skirts and cowboy boots, Saturday nights were best spent at El Corralón.
The cantina, tucked in the middle of Berclair, a heavily Hispanic neighborhood in Memphis, Tenn., was a rowdy joint where the mix of regional Mexican music and bachata was loud, the pool tables plenty and beer cheap enough. Gambling machines jangled by the wall.
Then, in recent weeks, neighbors started spotting drones overhead. Suspicious vans parked by the dumpsters. Unfamiliar patrons came in and left quickly. Some in the neighborhood believed the gambling machines, illegal in Tennessee, might make the business a target.
But the cantina remained open. Last Sunday, a crush of agents raided El Corralón, searching for the owner, Marco Sabillon-Urbina, an immigrant from Honduras, but detaining anyone who was in the country illegally.
In the end, the operation targeting illegal gambling and drugs spiraled into one of Tennessee’s largest sweeps of undocumented immigrants this year, as Immigration and Customs Enforcement escalates its operations across the country. More than 120 people were detained, inflaming tensions in Memphis, where many residents were already on edge over a separate federal anti-crime task force that, among other things, has also targeted immigrants.
“This takes them back to being afraid and not wanting to go out again,” said Jose Salazar, a community organizer who assists the immigrant community in Memphis. “All those fears and concerns are worse now.”
Arrests by ICE surged across the country this summer as the Trump administration pulled back from highly visible raids in Minneapolis and other cities earlier this year. The agency has carried out lower-profile operations, including targeting predominantly immigrant neighborhoods like Berclair last weekend.
Tennessee and other Republican-led states have also deepened coordination with the Trump administration and immigration authorities. In May, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation asked ICE for help identifying an undocumented man it suspected was involved in criminal activity at El Corralón, court records show.
The man, Mr. Sabillon-Urbina, first arrived in the United States in 1994 and received Temporary Protected Status in 1999; that status lapsed in January 2020 after he failed to renew the paperwork, federal law enforcement said in court records.
He was sent back to Honduras in 2023 as part of a federal plea agreement in connection with possession of drugs and a firearm. He was deported again in 2024 after trying to re-enter the United States.
Immigration and state agents executed two search warrants last weekend for the bar, related to drugs and illegal gambling. Mr. Sabillon-Urbina was named in one of the sealed warrants, photographs of which were reviewed by The New York Times. A lawyer for Mr. Sabillon-Urbina, who was detained on Sunday, did not return multiple requests for comment.
Mr. Sabillon-Urbina ran the bar with his wife, who was also detained, according to a former employee and neighbors in touch with their children. She could not be reached for comment.
Several residents said Mr. Sabillon-Urbina should have tried to be more careful.
“He could have said: You know what, close this up because they’re going to be investigating me and they may take a lot more people in the process,” Mery Sandra Rodriguez, who knows the Sabillon-Urbina family, said in Spanish.
El Corralón, which some residents described as seedy, had experienced trouble before. In 2019, a security guard was shot after breaking up a fight between two men, according to the police.
Still, on most nights, neighbors said, it was just a nearby place to dance and drink. Many had been scared of venturing far for a night out and risking being stopped and detained by the authorities.
“Sadly, because this place irresponsibly had illegal machines, the consequence of that is that our neighbors have been taken,” said Sandra Pita, a lead community organizer with the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. “These were mothers, fathers, sons who had nothing to do with the problems of this business.”
Before the raid began, it was a typically busy Saturday night, according to two people who were there. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared drawing more attention from law enforcement.
Inside it smelled of perfume, spilled fruity drinks, a faint whiff of body odor near the dance floor, they said. The D.J. sprinkled in some reggaeton. There were people in high-heels, cowboy boots and tucked-in button-downs.
Then, around 1 a.m. Sunday, more than a dozen agents walked in. They spread out across the cantina, some toward the D.J. booth to turn off the music, others toward the bar and gambling machines, telling people to stay calm.
People inside screamed, according to the people who witnessed the incident. One person scrambled to hide under a billiards table; another tried to hide behind large speakers. Agents told people to gather on the dance floor, where they asked if they were legally in the country one at a time. One man who appeared to be intoxicated cursed at the agents. Another repeated the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish. A woman begged them not to take her because she had small children.
A person who tried to record the scene was stopped by agents, the witnesses said.
Those who were undocumented — including bartenders, servers and some who were designated drivers that night — were zip-tied, taken out a side door and placed on buses or vans that would transport them to an ICE detention facility in Mason, Tenn.
A spokesman for the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said agents had seized “narcotics and evidence of illegal gambling” but declined to say more, citing an ongoing investigation.
“This criminal enforcement operation to arrest illegal aliens and eliminate drug activity in our community is part of the highest priorities of this administration,” said Scott Ladwig, the acting director of the New Orleans ICE office, in a statement released by the Department of Homeland Security.
ICE did not respond to additional questions about the operation or the people detained.
In the news release, D.H.S. singled out the criminal histories of five people detained, including arrests for larceny and drug possession. It has not provided more information on the other detainees.
Mayor Paul Young of Memphis, a Democrat, said in a statement that Memphis Police officers were not part of the operation and were called to the bar only after people had begun to gather outside.
Several relatives of people were who detained said they were angry at both ICE and Mr. Sabillon-Urbina. They said the bar owner had risked the lives of the very immigrants his business catered to.
Sofia, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras in her 20s who asked to be identified by only her first name because of her status, said her mother was detained that night and could soon be deported. She was saddened to see comments on Facebook criticizing people like her mother who had risked going out.
Her 8-year-old brother believes their mother is out on a work trip. But soon, Sofia said, she will have to tell him what really happened.
Hamed Aleaziz and Christina Morales contributed reporting. Seamus Hughes and Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
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