Communities remain terrified as Trump administration’s crackdown on another Democratic-led city enters day two
Dozens of people have been detained across the New Orleans area as the Trump administration’s latest sweeping federal immigration crackdown in a Democratic-led city entered its second day.
The city’s immigrant communities remain terrified and traumatized, advocates said, with many in hiding as people have been arrested in public spaces including parking lots outside Home Depots and Lowe’s hardware stores, at bus stops, shopping malls and in residential areas around the city.
Rachel Taber, an organizer with Unión Migrante, shared a video with the Guardian of masked border patrol agents questioning and then handcuffing a man in the parking lot of the Lowe’s on Elysian Fields on Wednesday. Agents ask the man where he was born. “I’m a US citizen,” he responds. “But where were you born,” the agent asks again, before repeating the question in Spanish. An unmarked white pickup truck is visible in the background. The man declines to answer any more questions, and the agent tells his colleague to handcuff him.
Taber has not been able to find out yet what happened to that man, but said she had learned of three incidents where US citizens were detained and held for questioning, before being later released after proving their citizenship. The Guardian approached the Department of Homeland Security to comment on those reports.
