How New Orleans activists are preparing for Trump deportations
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New Orleans immigration activists are preparing to fight against detention center expansion if President-elect Trump's administration makes good on promises for mass deportations once he takes office in January.
Why it matters: With about 6,700 people in custody, according to recent data, Louisiana is home to the second-largest population of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in facilities with conditions that have been called "abusive" by civil rights advocates.
Context: Trump has promised a significant crackdown on illegal immigration, including the start of mass deportations the day he moves back into the White House.
- "President Trump will marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation of illegal criminals, drug dealers, and human traffickers in American history while simultaneously lowering costs for families," said Trump-Vance transition team spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement to Axios' Russell Contreras.
- "The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, like deporting migrant criminals and restoring our economic greatness," she said. "He will deliver."
But those intentions, if carried out, will still face major speed bumps from the legal system and immigration bureaucracy.
- A backlog of 3.7 million court cases will take four years to resolve at the current pace, reports Axios' Contreras, who says that timeline could balloon to 16 years under the mass deportation plan. Go deeper.
- And that's not to mention the expense and backlash the policies would face.
What they're saying: "We've always been enduring attacks as immigrants. There's been deportations through all presidencies," says Edith Romero, an activist with the immigration advocacy group Unión Migrante, in New Orleans.
- She cites a recent example at the end of November when five immigrants, who she says worked at a Magazine Street restaurant, were detained by ICE.
- But, she says, "we do have very real concerns about the Trump presidency because he's so explicit."
- "We're telling our members and our community that we will turn that fear into action. We will turn that into preparing for what's to come, and that's what we've been working on these months."
Zoom in: Part of Romero's concern is about New Orleans officials' recent steps to end the consent decree, which governs the ongoing federal oversight of the New Orleans Police Department.
- Under that decree, the NOPD cannot take actions based on "actual or perceived immigration status" and can't question crime victims or witnesses about their immigration status, according to Verite.
Yes, but: Louisiana lawmakers earlier this year passed a ban on local governments and agencies adopting "sanctuary policies."
- The legislation became effective when Gov. Jeff Landry signed it in May.
- Landry also signed a bill this year allowing local law enforcement to enforce immigration law, but a federal appeals court's decision is pending on similar legislation in Texas.
State of play: NOPD's policy remains in effect, but the department is working with the Department of Justice, the Consent Decree Monitor and "various subject matter experts" to revise it, an NOPD spokesperson tells Axios.
- The Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office told Verite earlier this summer that, like NOPD, it would continue abiding by an existing policy not to investigate immigration violations or detain immigrants for ICE without a court order. That policy stems from a federal lawsuit settlement.
Threat level: Romero, a Honduran native who first came to New Orleans on a student visa, says she's concerned about additional immigrants being detained in Louisiana and testified in Baton Rouge against the "sanctuary" bill.
- The state is home to nine ICE facilities, which are overseen by the New Orleans Immigration and Customs Field Office. All but one are privately run, according to the ACLU.
- "I've [visited] detention centers and talked to immigrants detained there. The stories are horrible," she says. "People have literally told me, 'We are treated like animals.'"
- In a report released earlier this year based on immigrant interviews, the ACLU described conditions in those facilities as being abusive and unclean.
Worth noting: The ACLU of Louisiana declined through a representative to comment for this story, saying the organization preferred to wait until Trump takes office to respond to active policies.