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Article by Anita Wadhwani , Tennessee Lookout [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0]
U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche joined federal and state leaders in Tennessee on Friday to tout the record of the Memphis Safe Task Force a little more than one year after President Donald Trump first established the multi-agency crime-fighting force.
Overall crime in Memphis is now at a 25-year low, Blanche said, giving the task force credit for the reduction in violent crimes, robberies and vehicle thefts.
Blanche gave no timetable for a potential end to the enhanced law enforcement presence, saying the task force will remain in the city “as long as it takes.”
“We haven’t won yet. It’s not over,” he said. Blanche did not define terms for a successful completion of the task force’s mission in Memphis.
He also reiterated the Trump administration’s goal to replicate the model across the country, singling out Chicago as a goal.
“If you think about a place like Chicago, if Chicago called me and said, ‘we want to replicate Memphis in Chicago,’ we could transform an entire city, one of the most pivotal cities in this country, in the same way that we’ve transformed Memphis,” he said.
Since September 2025, the task force has brought hundreds of federal law enforcement officers to the city and surrounding Shelby County to serve warrants, make arrests, detain immigrants, conduct traffic stops and recover missing children, often working in tandem with the Tennessee Highway Patrol and other state and local law enforcement officers. Gov. Bill Lee deployed hundreds of soldiers with the Tennessee National Guard to support the effort.
The task force has been welcomed by Republican leaders, including Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the Republican nominee for governor, who praised the task force at Friday’s roundtable discussion in a Memphis warehouse alongside state Sen. Brent Taylor and Memphis Police Chief CJ Davis.
