Federal immigration officers are pulling out of a Louisiana crackdown and heading to Minneapolis in an abrupt pivot from an operation that drew protests around New Orleans and aimed to make thousands of arrests, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.
The shift appeared to signal a wind-down of the Louisiana deployment that was dubbed “Catahoula Crunch” and began in December with the arrival of more than 200 officers. The operation had been expected to last into February and swiftly raised fears in immigrant communities.
The Trump administration has been surging thousands of federal officers to Minnesota under a sweeping new crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents. More than 2,000 officers are taking part in what the Department of Homeland Security has called the biggest immigration enforcement operation ever.
The officers in Minneapolis have been met with demonstrations and anger after an ICE officer fatally shot a woman on Wednesday.
Documents obtained by the AP indicated that federal officers stationed in Louisiana were continuing to depart for Minneapolis late this week.
“For the safety of our law enforcement, we do not disclose operational details while they are under way,” DHS said on Friday in response to questions about whether the Louisiana deployment was ending in order to send officers to Minnesota.
In December, DHS deployed more than 200 federal officers to New Orleans to carry out a months-long sweep in and around the city under border patrol chief Gregory Bovino, who was also the face of aggressive operations in Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina. Bovino has been seen in Minneapolis this past week.
“Catahoula Crunch” began with a target of 5,000 arrests, the AP first reported. The operation had resulted in about 370 arrests as of 18 December, according to DHS.
Documents previously reviewed by AP showed the majority of people arrested in the Louisiana crackdown’s first days lacked criminal records and that authorities tracked online criticism and protests against the deployment.
Louisiana’s Republican governor, Jeff Landry, welcomed the crackdown. But New Orleans’s Democratic leaders called the 5,000-arrest target unrealistic and criticized videos that showed agents arresting or trying to detain residents, including a clip of a US citizen being chased down the street by masked men near her house.
New Orleans’s Democratic leaders have been more welcoming of a national guard deployment that Donald Trump authorized after Landry asked for help fighting crime. The troops arrived just before the New Year’s Day anniversary of a truck attack on Bourbon Street that killed 14 people.
In the Latino enclave of Kenner just outside New Orleans, many immigrant-run businesses temporarily closed during the operation to protect customers whom they feared would be racially profiled by federal officers regardless of their legal status. Some restaurants recently announced they were reopening.
Carmela Diaz, a US citizen born in El Salvador, has kept her Kenner taco restaurant Taqueria La Conquistadora shuttered for more than a month. She remains concerned that immigration officers could return but is considering resuming business soon.
“I’m going to wait and see this week,” she said. “I have a lot of clients who want to eat here.”
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