AMA 2/27: Catahoula Crunch might be over, but immigration enforcement in the New Orleans area isn’t. Ask reporter Bobbi-Jeanne Misick anything about detention centers, deportations and local police cooperation with ICE.

AMA 2/27: Catahoula Crunch might be over, but immigration enforcement in the New Orleans area isn’t. Ask reporter Bobbi-Jeanne Misick anything about detention centers, deportations and local police cooperation with ICE.

I’ve been covering immigration in Louisiana for the past five years. With the second-highest detained immigrant population in the country after Texas, a lot of my work in the state centered around what was happening inside the private prisons that now house federal immigrant detainees. But that all started to change when Jeff Landry became governor and when Donald Trump returned to the White House. Since 2024, Louisiana lawmakers have encouraged local law enforcement agencies to get involved with immigration enforcement, and beginning in 2025, we saw a lot more activity from immigration authorities operating in our communities. That activity reached a high point at the end of last year when hundreds of U.S. Border Patrol agents headed to southeast Louisiana for an operation they called “Catahoula Crunch.” The objective was to arrest 5,000 immigrants that the government suspected were in the country illegally. While the numbers fell short of that, there were some highly publicized immigration arrests, and Hispanic communities in the region were terrified that they would be ripped apart and that children would be left without their parents. The operation is over, but Louisiana still has 10 detention centers, including a deportation staging facility built on the tarmac of an international airport, and many local police departments and Sheriff’s Offices here have joined forces with federal immigration enforcement authorities. Ask me anything about how the system has worked in the past and what’s happening now that Operation: Catahoula Crunch is essentially over. I'll be back here on Friday to answer your questions. https://preview.redd.it/agbahl2ecplg1.jpg?width=3387&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1ded739a00e751d41eca16e3dbe9a50f8c73a008 submitted by /u/VeriteNewsNOLA [link] [comments]