President Donald Trump will visit Memphis on Monday to highlight the city’s turnaround with regard to crime under the Memphis Safe Task Force, his regional press secretary announced this week.
On Tuesday, White House Regional Press Secretary Liz Huston announced that the president will be on the ground in Memphis to “highlight the incredible achievements of the Memphis Safe Task Force.”
President Trump will visit Memphis, Tennessee on Monday to highlight the incredible achievements of the Memphis Safe Task Force. Under President Trump’s leadership, federal and state officials are working together successfully to remove criminals from the streets and make Memphis…
— Liz Huston (@LizHuston47) March 17, 2026
“Under President Trump’s leadership, federal and state officials are working together successfully to remove criminals from the streets and make Memphis safe again,” Huston added in the announcement posted to social media.
Led by the U.S. Marshals Service and composed of federal, state, and local law enforcement partners along with the Tennessee National Guard, the Memphis Safe Task Force was created to aggressively target violent offenders, clear outstanding warrants, seize illegal firearms, and locate missing children.
The initiative was established after Trump signed a memorandum ordering an aggressive federal intervention in Memphis in response to what he called “tremendous levels of violent crime” amid findings that Memphis had the highest violent crime rate per capita in 2024.
Since its official launch in the city on September 29, 2025, the multi-agency operation has made 7,115 arrests, including 44 for homicide, 789 for controlled substances, 606 for firearms violations, and 93 for sex offenses, according to a March 13 press release by the U.S. Marshals.
Furthermore, as of Friday, the task force has seized 1,167 illegal firearms and located 149 missing children since its launch last year.
At the beginning of this year, the Memphis Police Department celebrated significant crime reductions seen throughout the city in 2025, including a 26 percent drop in murders, a 31 percent decrease in robberies, and a historic reduction to fewer than 200 homicides for the first time since 2019.
Despite the progress seen in Memphis under the surge of resources directed by the Trump administration, the announcement of Trump’s upcoming visit to the city was met with opposition by State Representative Justin Pearson, one of the “Tennessee Three” Democrats who made national headlines in 2023 after commandeering the Tennessee House Floor to demand gun control three days after the March 27 shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville.
Pearson, who is running for Congress against incumbent Democrat U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN-09), said in response to the president’s anticipated visit, “Trump is doing what he does best. He is creating a fake narrative in Memphis to distract from the reality of his multi-billion dollar war overseas, skyrocketing gas prices, and the Epstein files.”
“Our city is not Trump’s vanity project,” Pearson added.
Further official details about Trump’s visit to Memphis next week have not yet been released.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
