US immigration crackdown forces teens to caretake after parents are detained | US immigration

Vilma Cruz, a mother of two, had just arrived at her newly rented home in Louisiana when federal agents surrounded her vehicle in the driveway. He had just enough time to call his eldest son before breaking the passenger window and taking him into custody.

The 38-year-old Honduran house painter was the subject of an immigration crackdown largely targeted at Kenner, a New Orleans suburb with a large Hispanic population, where some parents at risk of deportation were rushing to arrange emergency detention plans for their children if they were arrested.

Federal agents made more than 250 arrests in southeast Louisiana in December. accordingly The Department of Homeland Security is the latest in a series of enforcement operations that also took place in Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina. In some homes, the arrests took away caregivers and breadwinners, causing some young people to grow up quickly and fill in for absent mothers and fathers.

Cruz’s detention forced his son, Jonathan Escalante, an 18-year-old US citizen who graduated from high school this year, to care for his physically disabled nine-year-old sister. Escalante is now trying to access her mother’s bank account, find her sister’s medical records and doctors, and figure out how to pay the bills in her mother’s name.

“To be honest, I’m not ready to take on all these responsibilities,” Escalante told the Associated Press. “But I’m willing to take them on if I have to. And I just pray that I can get my mother back.”

The crackdown, called “Operation Catahoula Crunch”, aims to arrest 5,000 people. DHS has said it targets violent criminals but has released few details about who it arrests.

Records reviewed by the AP revealed that the majority of those detained in the first two days of the operation had no criminal record. Most immigration detainees across the U.S. involve immigrants without criminal records, according to government data.

Louisiana’s Republican lieutenant governor, Billy Nungesser, recently became the first state official to leave his party due to operations. He criticized them for undermining the regional economy by triggering a labor shortage, as even immigrants with valid work permits stayed home out of fear.

“Are they going to take everyone, whether they have children or not?” Nungesser said.

DHS said Cruz locked himself in the car and refused to roll down the window and exit the vehicle as ordered, forcing agents to break the window to unlock the door. He is being held in federal custody pending deportation proceedings, authorities said.

Immigrant rights groups say the operation used a tight-net approach to racially profile Hispanic communities.

Cruz’s family was supposed to move into their new home next January. He rented it so his son could finally sleep in his own room.

Kenner resident Kristi Rogers watched as masked agents detained Cruz, a future neighbor she had not yet met. Rogers said his heart goes out to Cruz and he wonders why he was targeted.

“I’m all for trying to clear out criminals from our area, but I hope the only things they detain and deport are criminals,” Rogers said.

Jefferson and Orleans county court records did not reveal any criminal history for Cruz, and his son said he had a clean record.

In conservative Kenner, where Hispanics make up about a third of the population and where Donald Trump has won the last three presidential elections, police chief Keith Conley said the federal immigration crackdown was “an answered prayer.”

As evidence of violence committed by immigrants in his city, Conley shared nearly a dozen press releases issued since 2022 documenting crimes including sexual offenses, murder, gang activity and shootings in which the suspect was determined to be in the United States illegally. He said residents are also at risk from unlicensed and uninsured immigrant drivers.

Jose Reyes, a Honduran construction worker and landscape architect whose family said he had lived in the United States for 16 years, stayed home for weeks to avoid federal agents. But the father of four had to pay rent and went to the bank around the corner last week.

Unmarked vehicles began following Reyes and pulled up next to his car as he parked in front of his home in Kenner. In a video reviewed by the AP, several agents can be seen rushing outside and pulling Reyes from his car as his crying daughters scream for mercy.

“We were begging them to let him go,” said oldest daughter Heylin Leonor Reyes, 19. “He’s the one providing the food, paying the bills, paying the rent. We were begging them because they’re leaving a family completely in the dark, trying to figure out what to do, trying to figure out where to find the money to get by.”

Asked about the arrest, DHS said Jose Reyes had committed an unspecified crime and had previously been deported from the United States. The agency did not provide detailed information.

His daughter, who works at a local restaurant, said her salary was not enough to keep a roof over her three younger siblings, two of whom she said were born in the United States and are citizens. His mother looks on at the youngest child, who is four years old, as he watches agents capture his father from the doorway.

Reyes said he was also looking for a lawyer for his father’s case. But they have to find him first.

“We were not given this information,” Reyes said. “We were given absolutely nothing.”

Reyes tried to protect his siblings from the stress of their father’s detention.

Escalante has yet to tell his sister about his mother’s arrest and hopes Cruz can be released without having to explain her absence.

“Technically, I’m the adult in the house now,” he said. “I have to make these difficult choices.”