Trump administration officials leading a new immigration crackdown in New Orleans have set a target of 5,000 arrests — a figure opponents in the city say is unrealistic and would inevitably sweep up far more than violent offenders.
The goal would exceed the number of arrests made during a two-month enforcement surge this fall in the Chicago area, which has a much larger immigrant population than New Orleans. Records from the early weeks of that Chicago operation also showed that most of those detained did not have violent criminal records.
In Los Angeles — an early focal point of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration agenda — about 5,000 people were arrested over the summer in a region where roughly one-third of LA County’s nearly 10 million residents are foreign-born.
“There is no rational basis that a sweep of New Orleans, or the surrounding parishes, would ever yield anywhere near 5,000 criminals, let alone ones that are considered ‘violent’ by any definition,” New Orleans City Council President J.P. Morrell said Thursday.
Census Bureau data show the New Orleans metro area had nearly 100,000 foreign-born residents last year, just under 60% of whom were not U.S. citizens.
“The amount of violent crime attributed to illegal immigrants is negligible,” Morrell added, noting that overall crime in the city has fallen to historic lows.
Violent crimes — including murders, rapes and robberies — dropped 12% through October compared with the same period a year earlier, declining from 2,167 to 1,897 incidents, according to New Orleans police statistics.
Residents report stepped-up arrests
Federal agents in both marked and unmarked vehicles began fanning out across New Orleans and surrounding suburbs on Wednesday, making arrests in home improvement store parking lots and cruising through neighborhoods with large immigrant communities.
Alejandra Vasquez, who runs a New Orleans social media page that tracks the movements of federal agents, said she has been inundated with messages, photos and videos since the operation ramped up.
“My heart is so broken,” Vasquez said. “They came here to take criminals and they are taking our working people. They are not here doing what they are supposed to do. They are taking families.”
Several hundred agents from Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are involved in the two-month initiative, which has been dubbed “Catahoula Crunch.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana is among the Republicans backing the campaign. “Democrats’ sanctuary city policies have failed — making our American communities dangerous. The people of our GREAT city deserve better, and help is now on the ground,” Johnson wrote on social media.
Crackdown meets fierce pushback
Tensions spilled into a New Orleans City Council meeting Thursday, where about two dozen protesters were removed after chanting “Shame” at officials. Police ordered demonstrators out of the building, with some being pushed or carried out.
Planning documents obtained last month by The Associated Press indicate the operation extends across southeast Louisiana and into Mississippi.
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said agents are targeting immigrants who were released after earlier arrests for violent crimes.
“In just 24 hours on the ground, our law enforcement officers have arrested violent criminals with rap sheets that include homicide, kidnapping, child abuse, robbery, theft, and assault,” McLaughlin said in a Thursday statement. Border Patrol and immigration officials have not released further details, including how many people have been arrested so far.
She told CNN on Wednesday that “we will continue whether that will be 5,000 arrests or beyond.”
Fears that enforcement will sweep up non-violent residents
Immigrant advocates and local officials say that to hit those numbers in New Orleans, federal agencies will almost certainly broaden their focus beyond people with serious criminal histories.
New Orleans City Councilmember Lesli Harris said “there are nowhere near 5,000 violent offenders in our region” for Border Patrol to arrest.
“What we’re seeing instead are mothers, teenagers, and workers being detained during routine check-ins, from their homes and places of work,” Harris said. “Immigration violations are civil matters, not criminal offenses, and sweeping up thousands of residents who pose no threat will destabilize families, harm our economy.”
In Chicago, during the “Operation Midway Blitz” campaign that began in September, federal agents arrested more than 4,000 people across the city, its suburbs and parts of Indiana.
Homeland Security officials promoted the effort as a push to capture violent offenders, posting dozens of photos on social media of people described as having criminal histories and lacking legal permission to remain in the U.S. But public records from the early weeks of the Chicago operation show most people arrested did not have violent criminal records.
Of roughly 1,900 people picked up in the Chicago area from early September through mid-October — the most recent data available — nearly 300, or about 15%, had criminal convictions, according to ICE arrest data from the University of California Berkeley Deportation Data Project analyzed by The Associated Press.
Most of those convictions were for traffic offenses, misdemeanors or non-violent felonies, the data showed.
New Orleans’ changing immigrant community
New Orleans, long shaped by French, Spanish, African and Native American influences, has in recent years seen a new wave of immigrants arriving from Central and South America and parts of Asia.
Statewide, Louisiana had more than 145,000 foreign-born noncitizens, according to Census Bureau figures. While the data does not specify how many are in the country illegally, the Pew Research Center estimated that about 110,000 undocumented immigrants lived in Louisiana in 2023.
