NEW ORLEANS — The New Orleans ICE raids have intensified as the Department of Homeland Security surges Border Patrol and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents into the metro under an operation dubbed “Catahoula Crunch,” which officials say is built around a goal of 5,000 arrests across Louisiana and Mississippi. Neighbors and city leaders are countering the New Orleans ICE raids with protests, volunteer legal help and rapid-response teams that document encounters and steer families toward assistance, Dec. 14, 2025.
New Orleans ICE raids hit a city already on edge
DHS announced the crackdown in a Dec. 3 news release, framing the sweep as a targeted effort focused on immigrants accused of serious crimes and arguing that local “sanctuary” practices allow people to be released from jail before federal agents can take custody. But DHS has not publicly released a full roster of detainees, detailed charges tied to each arrest, or a public breakdown of criminal histories tied to the early arrests.
The lack of detail is pouring gasoline on a regional argument over safety, civil rights and transparency — and it is being watched in near real time. Records reviewed by the Associated Press show state and federal agencies tracking online criticism and protests and compiling briefings on public “sentiment” around the operation. Those same records showed fewer than a third of the 38 people arrested in the first two days had criminal histories beyond traffic violations, and New Orleans City Council President J.P. Morrell said, “There’s literally no information being given to the city of New Orleans whatsoever.”
Even the headline numbers are shifting. WDSU reported that DHS is claiming more than 250 arrests so far and that a senior law enforcement official told NBC News Border Patrol made 111 arrests in the first week. With about 250 agents deployed in the region, crime data analyst Jeff Asher questioned whether the 5,000-arrest target is realistic: “For 250 officers, I think that’s the number that’s been deployed in the region, to make that number of arrests is highly unlikely.”
How neighbors are pushing back during the New Orleans ICE raids
Organizers say the response has to be as mobile as the crackdown. Volunteers have printed “know your rights” cards in Spanish and English, set up hotlines to help families locate detained relatives, and run trainings on filming federal agents safely — without interfering. Demonstrations have drawn crowds not only in New Orleans but also in nearby communities such as Kenner and Slidell, where residents and elected officials have split between cheering the crackdown and warning it’s sweeping too broadly.
Outside Orleans Parish, pushback collides with a different reality: deeper local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The Marshall Project reported that Kenner entered a 287(g) agreement with ICE this year, allowing ICE-trained local officers to perform certain immigration processing functions while people are booked into jail — a shift advocates fear can turn routine arrests into immigration cases, even when the underlying charge is minor.
This isn’t New Orleans’ first clash over immigration enforcement
The New Orleans ICE raids may feel sudden, but the city’s “sanctuary” battles are not. In 2017, The Lens documented how the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, citing a federal settlement, said it would not broadly honor ICE detainer requests. That same year, Fox 8 reported New Orleans was among cities pressed by the Justice Department to prove compliance with immigration enforcement or risk losing federal dollars — a flashpoint moment that previewed today’s fight over local cooperation and public safety.
More recently, an AP report from July described how Louisiana’s Act 399 threatened criminal penalties for officials who don’t fully cooperate with federal immigration investigations — even as the sheriff’s office argued it remains bound by federal court orders limiting detainer cooperation.
With Catahoula Crunch expected to run for weeks, the next test is whether officials provide transparency about who is being detained — and whether the next wave of New Orleans ICE raids meets a community that’s already organized to document it.
