NEW ORLEANS — Federal authorities announced the start of an immigration enforcement operation in New Orleans on Wednesday, the latest front in the Trump administration’s crackdown.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that its targets would include violent criminals who were released after being arrested. For weeks, New Orleans, a city led by Democrats in a conservative state, had been nervously bracing for the agents’ arrival. Immigrant advocates have been warning residents to reduce their time outdoors as much as possible, given the outcomes of past operations in Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina.

It was unclear Wednesday morning what specific federal agencies were involved in the operation. But previous efforts in those cities were led by the Border Patrol and a senior official, Gregory Bovino, who have been criticized for their aggressive tactics, with agents seen flooding grocery store parking lots frequented by Latinos, hanging around Home Depots to pick up people in the country illegally who are looking for work and sometimes roughly detaining American citizens.

In announcing the New Orleans operation, the Trump administration said it was pursuing “the worst of the worst” criminals who were in the country illegally and included a list of 10 people it said had been released from local jails because of sanctuary city policies.

Most of the people detained in past operations, however, have not had criminal histories. In Charlotte, for example, where more than 370 people were arrested, only about 44 had criminal records, according to federal officials. The full scope of the arrested people’s crimes remains unclear.

Still, Bovino, who often engages with his critics and admirers on the social platform X, has posted on social media about a handful of the immigrants who he says have serious criminal records.

Immigrants Less Likely to Commit Crimes

Data shows that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, but some argue that any crime committed by someone in the country illegally could have been prevented by stricter immigration enforcement.

Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, a Republican, has welcomed the agents with open arms, telling Fox News last month that he hoped they could start “taking some of these dangerous criminal illegal aliens off of our streets.”

Helena Moreno, New Orleans’ Democratic mayor-elect who was born in Mexico, expressed wariness about what might come next.

“The reports of due process violations and potential abuses in other cities are concerning,” Moreno said in a statement before the operation began. “I want our community to be aware and informed of the protections available under law.”

As it has in its other deployments around the country, the Homeland Security Department gave its New Orleans operation a nickname: Catahoula Crunch. Critics have derided these seemingly whimsical names as discordant and offensive given the seriousness of the operations and the harshness of the department’s tactics.

The operation comes at the end of a remarkably challenging year for New Orleans. It began with a deadly terrorist attack in January, and over the summer the city’s mayor, LaToya Cantrell, was indicted on charges of using public funds to carry out a romantic relationship with her bodyguard, a city police officer.

New Orleans is also grappling with a budget crisis, and residents have criticized the city for becoming too economically dependent on tourism, which mostly provides low-wage jobs.

Many of the jobs in that industry are filled by immigrants.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Eduardo Medina and Hamed Aleaziz/Kathleen Flynn
c. 2025 The New York Times Company