McCulley-Stacy

On a Tuesday morning, between nine and ten o’clock, ICE agents swept through downtown Sparta, resulting in multiple arrests. A foot chase through the streets had our fellow neighbors scrambling in terror. People taken into federal custody right here in our neighborhood, in the shadow of the same courthouse where we settle disputes, probate wills, and swear people into office.

This was not a White County operation, nor a City of Sparta operation. This came from Washington D.C. and it landed in the middle of our town without so much as a heads-up to local leadership.

What started as a reported welfare check at a local business last week, turned into something far more disturbing. Local charges against those detained were later dismissed, meaning whatever justified their initial detention didn’t hold up under scrutiny. Federal agents were already there, and once ICE has you, the local courts don’t much matter anymore. The machinery moves faster than due process can keep up.

I want to be clear about something before anyone assumes where I’m going with this, I am not arguing against immigration law. I believe in borders. I believe in legal process. I believe this country has both the right and the responsibility to manage who comes and goes. Those are not radical positions to hold.

But I am asking you to think about what happened Tuesday, specifically how it happened. I want you to think about the reported welfare check last week. A call placed out of concern for human safety. Yet the outcome was a federal immigration sweep in the heart of Sparta. That gap between intention and actuality is where we need to plant a flag and ask some hard questions.

Here’s the hypocrisy that’s worth naming out loud, we benefit from these neighbors every single day. They work in our restaurants, on our job sites, in our fields and factories. White County’s economy doesn’t function without them, and most of us know it. We cash their paychecks without hesitation on Monday. Then we act like strangers on Tuesday when theunmarked federal vehicles show up. That is not who we say we are as a community. It’s high time that we reconcile those two versions of ourselves.

Here is what keeps me up at night and what should keep you awake too, the children. Not an abstraction or a far removed illustration, actual kids. Children who were born here or have grown up here, who know no other home, who speak English and say the Pledge of Allegiance and go to White County schools. Some of them woke up Wednesday morning and a parent was gone. Not gone to work. Gone. That is not a policy debate. That is a White County child in crisis, and this community has to decide whether that child is our shared responsibility or somebody else’s problem to sort out.

What I’m calling for isn’t open borders or amnesia about the law. I’m calling for common sense reform that creates real legal pathways for people who are already woven into the fabric of this community. I’m calling for protection of minors who are caught in the crossfire of adult decisions they had no part in making. I’m calling for transparency, so that when federal agents operate in our town, our neighbors aren’t finding out the same way the rest of us are: scrolling through their phones.

I’m calling for you to use your voice where it counts. Call your state representatives. Call your congressman. Call your senators. Write the letters. Show up to the town halls. The people we send to Nashville and Washington work for you, not the other way around, and it is long past time we reminded them of that. Demand humane reform. Demand that minors be protected. Demand that our community have a seat at the table when decisions are made that affect our streets, our schools, and our neighbors. Accountability doesn’t happen on its own. It happens when enough ordinary people decide that silence is no longer acceptable and that being a good neighbor means more than a wave from the driveway.

Most of all, I’m asking you not to look away. Tuesday happened. Right here, on streets you drive every day, in a town where everybody knows everybody.

Awareness is the first act of decency. Advocacy is the next. Silence, in a community this small, this connected, this proud of its character, is a choice with consequences that will outlast the news cycle.

— Bobby Lee McCulley-Stacy is a columnist, writer, and civic strategist

Published on 05/29/26 in The Expositor