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 regional Mexican music and bachata was loud, the pool tables plenty and beer cheap. Gambling machines jangled by the wall.

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. 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.

"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. 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.

In May, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation asked ICE for help identifying Mr. Sabillon-Urbina. He first arrived in the United States in 1994 and received Temporary Protected Status in 1999; that status lapsed in January 2020. He was sent back to Honduras in 2023 and deported again in 2024 after trying to re-enter.