A protester waves a flag during a demonstration against an impending immigration crackdown in New Orleans on Monday.Gerald Herbert/AP
The Department of Homeland Security officially launched what it’s calling “Operation Catahoula Crunch” in New Orleans on Wednesday, expanding the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown in Louisiana. Federal immigration officers, in coordination with local law enforcement, are aiming to arrest 5,000 people in southeast Louisiana and into Mississippi.
The wider operation is called “Swamp Sweep.”
New Orleans Mayor-elect Helena Moreno, a Democrat who was born in Mexico, has been critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s impending presence in the city. “You have parents who are scared to send their children to school,” Moreno told the local CNN affiliate WWL. “At my church,” she said, “there is a one o’clock service, Spanish-speaking service every Sunday, that keeps getting smaller and smaller. People are really, really scared.”
Moreno’s office has released guidelines instructing residents on how to interact with ICE. “Always comply with lawful orders from Law Enforcement,” the website reads, adding that local law enforcement “will not ask about your immigration status.” “Most of all,” the guidance continues, “keep each other safe.”
The governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, is more eager to comply with the administration’s deportation efforts.
“Thank you President @realDonaldTrump and @Sec_Noem for putting AMERICANS first,” Landry said, tagging President Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in a post on X. “We welcome the Swamp Sweep in Louisiana.”
Landry, a Trump ally, has also been working with the president to send National Guard troops into the state in coming weeks, a presence that the governor says will continue through Mardi Gras, which is scheduled for February 2026.
Trump and Landry claim that the efforts are to address crime across New Orleans and the state, though the city “has logged significant drops in crime and is on pace to have its lowest number of homicides in nearly 50 years,” according to reporting from NBC News based on crime data from the police department.
DHS’s campaign in New Orleans is the administration’s latest stop in a cross-country immigration crackdown. Officers, under Trump’s guidance, have been picking up people from New York City to Portland to Tucson to Minneapolis.
Newly elected Councilmember-at-Large Matthew Willard (D-La.) told CNN that there has been “mass chaos and confusion” ahead of ICE’s operation in New Orleans on Wednesday.
“We’re really just fearful of the unknown, and looking at the coverage that we’ve seen in other cities by CNN,” he said, adding, “we certainly don’t want that here in the city of New Orleans.”
