By Jack Phillips
The U.S. Marshals Service has located and returned dozens of missing children in Memphis, Tennessee, over the past several weeks, the law enforcement agency announced.
While few details were provided, the service said that 101 children were safely returned over a 40-day operation, according to a brief Nov. 8 press release issued by the agency.
“We are happy that we have been able to use our fugitive hunting skills to assist local and state authorities with finding these missing children,” Emily Williams, a U.S. Marshals spokeswoman, said in a statement.
“What a testament to our partnerships to be able to work these cases together. While investigative work is tedious, locating missing and endangered children is one of the things we are most proud of.”
Earlier this year, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said that it would launch a multi-agency effort to reduce crime in Memphis, which is among the most violent major U.S. cities.
On Oct. 29, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced at the time that federal agents had rescued about 80 missing children and arrested 1,700 people, including 126 gang members.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in mid-September to send in the National Guard to the city, citing its crime rate.
Trump told reporters at the Oval Office that the deployed troops would join a special task force in the city comprising officials from various federal agencies, including the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Marshal’s Service.
He said the goal would be to reduce crime, as was the case in Washington, where the National Guard was sent and the city’s local police force was federalized. Other cities have also had National Guard deployments this year, including Los Angeles and Chicago.
“This task force will be a replica of our extraordinarily successful efforts here,” Trump said of federal efforts in Washington during his signing of the Memphis order in September. “And you’ll see it’s a lot of the same thing, although the numbers here are really something, they’re really bad.”
According to FBI data analyzed by SafeHome.org, a security product website, Memphis had the highest homicide rate in the United States among large cities in 2024, at 40.6 per 100,000 residents. That beat out Baltimore and Detroit, which saw 34.8 and 31.2 homicides per 100,000 residents, respectively, the website said.
West Memphis, Arkansas, which is a suburb of about 23,000 residents just west of Memphis, had the second-highest murder rate in the United States, at 72 per 100,000 residents, according to the data.
But as Trump sent in the Guard, the Memphis Police Department said that crime in the city was at a 25-year low across several major categories, including robbery, burglary, and larceny. The homicide rate was also at a six-year low, the police force added.
The federal efforts got some local pushback.
J. Ford Canale, chairman of the Memphis City Council, responded to Trump’s directive in September by recounting the city’s experience during the Civil Rights Movement.
“For many Memphians, the very mention of the National Guard recalls painful memories from 1968,” Canale said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times at the time, calling the deployment of troops “at best, a short-term measure.”
Some local officials hailed the move, however, with state Rep. Mark White telling The Epoch Times that there is a shortage of police officers in the city.
