Several people arrested in New Orleans amid ICE ‘siege’: ‘It’s racial profiling’ | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
Dozens of people were detained in the New Orleans area as the Trump administration’s latest sweeping federal crackdown on immigrants in the Democratic-led city entered its second day.
Immigrant communities in the city remain terrified and traumatized, with many arrested people hiding in public areas, including parking lots outside Home Depots and Lowe’s hardware stores, bus stops, shopping malls and residential areas in the city, attorneys said.
Rachel Taber, an organizer with Unión Migrante, shared a video with the Guardian showing masked border patrol agents questioning and then handcuffing a man in the parking lot of Lowe’s in Elysian Fields on Wednesday. Agents ask the man where he was born. “I am a US citizen,” he replies. “So where were you born?” the agent asked, before repeating the question in Spanish. he asks again. An unmarked white pickup truck is seen in the background. The man refuses to answer any more questions and the agent tells his colleague to handcuff him.
Taber has yet to find out what happened to the man, but he said he has learned of three incidents in which U.S. citizens were detained and held for questioning, then released after proving their citizenship. The Guardian has approached the Department of Homeland Security for comment on these reports.
CNN also reported the case of a 22-year-old US-born mother who was chased from a grocery store in Marrero to her home in an SUV by federal agents. “I kept yelling at them, ‘I’m legal! I’m US-born! Please leave me alone! I’m going home, my daughter’s home. My baby’s waiting for me!'” she told CNN.
“They don’t take criminals,” Taber said. “They pick up people off the streets who they can; these are mothers and fathers coming home from work, and they are ambushed as they get out of their cars.” Taber was aware of 14 arrests on Wednesday and four on Thursday; One of them was that federal agents broke the windows of a man’s car in a Walmart parking lot before taking the man into custody.
“It’s like psychological warfare. They’re attacking people who have committed no crime, just the color of their skin. It’s just heterosexual racial profiling.”
The Trump administration insists it is going after the “worst of the worst,” people convicted of the most serious violent crimes. But when the Guardian reached out to the US Department of Homeland Security to confirm how many of the arrests in so-called “Operation Catahoula Crunch” involved undocumented immigrants with criminal records, DHS said only that “dozens” of people had been detained and singled out six people. In one case, the only convictions were for vehicle theft and forging documents.
“The people of New Orleans are against this,” Taber said, adding that his phone was constantly ringing with people wanting to film and document what was happening, and that his parents were assisting with things like carpooling to pick up children safely to and from school. “This is the only light we have right now.”
A city council meeting was disrupted for about half an hour on Thursday due to heated protests over the federal operation.
Things escalated during the public comment portion of the meeting, with attorneys imploring city officials to “please do more to protect us from ICE and border patrol.” They held signs reading “silence supports deportation” and “immigrants built and rebuilt this city” in tribute to the thousands of Hispanic reconstruction workers who supported the city’s recovery after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
The Council has established an online portal for citizens to report alleged misconduct and abuse by federal officials, which includes information about your rights when interacting with law enforcement. But advocates demanded that they go further and declare city property “FROST-FREE” zones where ICE agents and other federal personnel are not allowed to conduct operations.
“Young kids are not going to school right now. People can’t take their disabled parents to medical appointments,” Mich Gonzalez, an activist and founding member of the Southeast Dignity Not Detention Coalition, said just before she was suspended. “Markets are suffering, businesses are going to suffer. This city lives on hospitality. Who do you think washes the dishes in those restaurants?”
As protesters cheered and applauded, council president J.P. Morrell demanded that public comments on the matter be suspended and their microphones cut off; This caused protesters to get even louder, chanting “let the people speak” and “no ICE, no military.” Police officers forced the protesters out after brief scuffles and shoving. Video footage shows a person being forcibly executed by the police.
It remains unclear how long the federal operation will last, but some reports suggest it could extend into January. “This is like a siege,” Taber said. Many people stay home for fear of arrest, but “at some point, how are people going to pay their rent?” Taber said he has a friend who wants to sell his truck to pay rent, but once that’s done, he’ll have a hard time doing his job without it.
The collective trauma inflicted on New Orleans’ immigrant communities will be difficult to measure as so many businesses in the city remain closed and people continue to hide out of fear whenever they can.
As Taber puts it: “There are children who will not only be without gifts this Christmas, but neither will their parents.”
