Nashville, Tennessee — At the age of 80, Lynne McFarland of Nashville, Tennessee, isn’t taking it easy.
She’s technically retired, but spends three days a week, several hours per day, packing and delivering boxes filled with food and other basic needs to families of undocumented immigrants living in Nashville. Some are too scared to leave their homes.
She estimates that she delivers about 25 boxes each week. She is one of a few dozen such volunteers in the city.
She said “most” of the families that she delivers food to have had a family member who was detained or deported.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement made about 1,000 daily arrests of undocumented immigrants in June, according to ICE’s online database. Still, that’s just one-third of the Trump administration’s daily goal of 3,000 arrests.
“I’ve never had an issue with the law, never,” the man said, going on to say that he has “never even gotten a traffic ticket.”
He said he was eventually released by ICE, but his fate in the U.S. is still unclear despite earning Temporary Protected Status when he crossed the border in 2021, and later, a work permit. He also has a one-year-old child who was born in the U.S. In May, the Supreme Court ruled that it would allow the Trump administration to halt the TPS program for Venezuelans.
“I think there’s fear on all sides,” McFarland said. “I think there’s fear that we don’t know who’s next, and we know that there will be a next.”
