SCOOP: Top congressional committees launch probe into Nashville mayor accused of blocking ICE

FIRST ON FOX: Two powerful committees in the House of Representatives are opening an investigation into another Democratic official accused of blocking federal immigration authorities.

House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., is leading a probe into Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell alongside Nashville-area Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn, Fox News Digital learned Friday.

Ogles had been petitioning leaders for weeks to look into O’Connell after the Democratic leader publicly denounced Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations in his city and signed an executive order aimed at tracking ICE movements in the area. He sent a letter earlier this month accusing O'Connell of "obstructing federal law enforcement."

The probe is being supported by the House Judiciary Committee, which is led by Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., chair of the subcommittee for immigration enforcement.

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"The Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Homeland Security of the U.S. House of Representatives are conducting oversight of state and local jurisdictions that endanger American communities through efforts aimed at thwarting the work of federal immigration officials," the four leaders wrote in a letter to O’Connell.

"While the state of Tennessee has outlawed sanctuary policies, recent actions from your office threaten to chill immigration enforcement in the City of Nashville and Davidson County. Accordingly, we write to request information about how your recent actions, including a directive to Nashville and Davidson County employees to disclose their communications with federal immigration officials, affects the robust enforcement of immigration law."

The lawmakers said O’Connell’s executive order, which mandated that government employees report interactions with federal immigration authorities, "could have a chilling effect on the ability of local law enforcement to communicate freely and candidly with federal immigration employees."

"In fact, your chief lawyer recently admitted that it was an ‘open question’ whether an individual could legally ‘announce in advance that there’s an impending enforcement activity,’" they wrote. 

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"This statement, when viewed in context of your order requiring all Metro law-enforcement officers to report about communications with ICE personnel, raises the prospect that Metro employees may use nonpublic information to warn criminal aliens of planned ICE enforcement operations. In other words, there is the real potential that your Executive Order could have the effect of diminishing ICE enforcement operations."

It comes after ICE agents working with the Tennessee Highway Patrol arrested nearly 200 people the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said were illegal immigrants – many of them criminals with gang affiliations or other sordid pasts.

The DHS news release targeted O'Connell by name over comments he made in early May. "What's clear today is that people who do not share our values of safety and community have the authority to cause deep community harm."

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After the arrests, O'Connell signed an executive order aimed at tracking peoples' interactions with federal immigration authorities, according to WSMV4.

He said of ICE's work in his city, "It’s important for us to get this right, and it’s very frustrating to see a failure in the process."

O’Connell also helped launch the Nashville government’s nonprofit, "The Belonging Fund," to help illegal immigrants pay for urgent care needs. The fund’s website states that "donations to the fund are made possible solely by individual donors and private organizations - no government dollars are included. That means no taxpayer dollars are being used in the administration or distribution of this fund."

Republicans, however, have questioned whether that is true.

"The recipients of these funds are untraceable, and the purpose seems crystal clear: help illegal foreigners evade the law," Ogles told Fox News Digital. "I refuse to sit back while our communities are overrun — while our neighborhoods are destroyed and our daughters are assaulted. And I doubly refuse to stay silent while blue city mayors aid and abet this invasion."

O’Connell is now one of several Democratic leaders locked in an immigration fight with the Trump administration.

House Rep. LaMonica McIver, D-N.J., was charged by the Justice Department with assaulting an officer after she and two other House Democrats forced their way into a Newark ICE detention center, charges McIver has dismissed as political.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Nashville mayor’s office for comment on the letter.