Dozens of people have been detained across the New Orleans area as the Trump administration’s latest sweeping federal immigration crackdown in a Democratic-led city entered its second day.
The city’s immigrant communities remain terrified and traumatized, advocates said, with many in hiding as people have been arrested in public spaces including parking lots outside Home Depots and Lowe’s hardware stores, at bus stops, shopping malls and in residential areas around the city.
Rachel Taber, an organizer with Unión Migrante, shared a video with the Guardian of masked border patrol agents questioning and then handcuffing a man in the parking lot of the Lowe’s on Elysian Fields on Wednesday. Agents ask the man where he was born. “I’m a US citizen,” he responds. “But where were you born,” the agent asks again, before repeating the question in Spanish. An unmarked white pickup truck is visible in the background. The man declines to answer any more questions, and the agent tells his colleague to handcuff him.
Taber has not been able to find out yet what happened to that man, but said she had learned of three incidents where US citizens were detained and held for questioning, before being later released after proving their citizenship. The Guardian approached the Department of Homeland Security to comment on those reports.
CNN also reported the case of a 22-year-old US-born mother who was chased home by federal agents in an SUV from the grocery store in Marrero. She told CNN: “I kept yelling at them, ‘I’m legal! I’m a US-born citizen! Please, leave me alone! I’m going home, my daughter is in the house. My baby is waiting for me!’”
“They’re not picking up criminals,” said Taber. “They’re picking up people off the streets, whoever they can catch – these are moms and dads coming home from work, ambushed getting out of their cars.” Taber was aware of 14 arrests on Wednesday and four so far on Thursday, including one in which federal agents smashed a man’s car windows in a Walmart parking lot before taking him into custody.
“It’s like psychological warfare. They’re attacking people who haven’t committed any crime, it’s just the color of their skin. It’s just straight racial profiling.”
The Trump administration insists it is going after “the worst of the worst”, people convicted for the most serious violent crimes. But when the Guardian reached out to the US Department of Homeland Security to verify how many of the arrests so far in so-called “Operation Catahoula Crunch” involved undocumented migrants with a criminal record, DHS said only that “dozens” of people had been detained, highlighting six individuals. In one case, the only conviction was for vehicle theft and forging documents.
“The people of New Orleans are against this,” Taber said, adding that her phone was constantly ringing with people wanting to help film and document what has been happening, and assist with things like carpools to get kids whose parents were in hiding safely to and from school. “That’s the only light we have right now.”
A city council meeting was disrupted for about half an hour on Thursday amid a heated protest over the federal operation.
Things got heated during the meeting’s public comment section, when advocates implored city officials to “please do more to protect us” from ICE and border patrol. They held up signs reading, “silence supports deportation” and “immigrants built and rebuilt this city”, a nod to the thousands of Hispanic reconstruction workers who powered the city’s recovery after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
The council has set up an online portal for citizens to report alleged abuse and misconduct from federal officers, which includes information about your rights when interacting with law enforcement. But advocates demanded they go further and declare city property “ICE-free” zones where ICE agents and other federal personnel are not permitted to stage operations.
“Little kids are not going to school right now. People are not able to take their disabled parents to medical appointments,” said Mich Gonzalez, an activist and founding member of Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition, just before the suspension. “The grocery stores are suffering, the businesses will suffer. This city lives on hospitality. Who do you think washes all the dishes in those restaurants?”
As protesters cheered and applauded, the council president, JP Morrell, motioned to suspend public comments on the topic and cut their microphones, which spurred protesters to get more raucous, chanting “let the people speak” and “no ICE, no troops.” Police officers forced the protesters out after brief scuffles with pushing and shoving. In video footage, one person is forcefully carried out by police.
It remains unclear how long the federal operation will last, but some reports suggest it could stretch into January. “It’s like a siege,” said Taber. Many people have been staying home out of fear of arrest but “at some point, how are people going to pay their rent?” Taber said she had one friend looking to sell his truck in order to make rent, but would struggle to do his job without it after this is over.
As numerous businesses around the city remain shuttered and people continue to hunker down out of fear for as long as they can, the collective trauma inflicted on the immigrant communities of New Orleans will be hard to measure.
As Taber put it: “There are kids this Christmas who are not just going to be without presents, they’re going to be without parents.”
