Mayor Paul Young confirmed late Monday in a contentious town hall meeting with Hispanic residents that the Memphis Police Department is cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

His statements before a crowd of hundreds in East Memphis came as a remarkable development considering that city leaders for years had denied any collaboration between the police force and ICE.

Young said his aim in allowing the cooperation was to steer federal agents away from mass deportation and toward helping MPD investigate murders and other violent crimes.

If he fought the administration of President Donald Trump, as officials in Chicago are doing, the federal government would respond with even harsher tactics, he said.

“I believe that the posture of Chicago has caused the federal government to flood the community with ICE agents focused on immigration,” Young said, drawing occasional applause. “That is why I have chosen to make sure that our police department is working with the federal teams to direct them towards our problem, which is crime.”

But the mayor received sharp pushback from some in the crowd at Mullins United Methodist Church where a big group of mostly Hispanic residents turned out to hear Young speak alongside Police Chief Cerelyn “CJ” Davis.

“This morning, they took away a mother. The mother left behind a one-year-old child,” Maria Alejandra Oceja said in Spanish. A key leader of community group Vecindarios901, Oceja said it’s one of many similar cases of parents arrested and children left behind.

At another point, a woman shouted at the mayor from the back of the church. “Should we wait until all of our family members get taken away?”

But Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, who attended the Monday night meeting, told the Institute for Public Service Reporting that he has been receiving regular reports from the task force.

“I think people expected it to be about crime. And even on immigration — immigrants who are criminals — that’s not what we’re seeing,” Mulroy said.

About 20 percent of the arrests are immigration-related, he said. What proportion of those involve immigrants accused of committing crimes?

“I don’t know precisely, but not many,’’ Mulroy said. “There doesn’t seem to be any indication of reports of criminal activity other than unlawful presence in the United States.”

Entry into the country without inspection can be charged as a crime, yet unlawful presence in the United States is generally treated as a civil immigration offense, not a crime.

The light federal enforcement in non-border areas meant that most unauthorized immigrants in Memphis managed to live normal lives: working in construction and other industries and frequently buying homes, sending children to school and sometimes launching their own businesses.

Today, the situation has changed dramatically. The Trump administration and Congress are dedicating billions of dollars toward large-scale deportation, regardless of the immigrants’ criminal records.

Seventy-two percent immigrants in detention centers today have no criminal convictions, according to the Transactional Access Records Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.