KENNER, Louisiana: Vilma Cruz, a mother of two, had just arrived at her newly leased Louisiana home this week when federal agents surrounded her vehicle in the driveway. She had just enough time to call her oldest son before they smashed the passenger window and detained her.
The 38-year-old Honduran house painter was swept up in an immigration crackdown that has largely targeted Kenner, a Hispanic enclave just outside New Orleans, where some parents at risk of deportation had rushed to arrange emergency custody plans for their children in case they were arrested.
Federal agents have made more than 250 arrests this month across southeast Louisiana, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the latest in a series of enforcement operations that have also unfolded in Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina. In some homes, the arrests have taken away parents who were caretakers and breadwinners, leaving some teenagers to grow up fast and fill in at home for absent mothers and fathers.
Cruz’s detention forced her son, Jonathan Escalante, an 18-year-old US citizen who recently finished high school, to care for his 9-year-old sister, who has a physical disability. Escalante is now trying to access his mother’s bank account, locate his sister’s medical records and doctors, and figure out how to pay bills in his mother’s name.
“Honestly I’m not ready, having to take care of all of these responsibilities,” Escalante told The Associated Press. “But I’m willing to take them on if I have to. And I’m just praying that I get my mom back.”
Fearful families made emergency custody plans
The crackdown dubbed “Catahoula Crunch” has a goal of 5,000 arrests. DHS has said it is targeting violent offenders but has released few details on who it is arresting. Records reviewed by AP found that the majority of those detained in the first two days of the effort had no criminal histories.
This week, Louisiana Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser, a Republican, became the first state official to break with his party over the operations. He criticized them for undermining the regional economy by triggering labor shortages because even immigrants with valid work permits have stayed home out of fear.
“So I think there needs to be some clarity of what’s the plan,” Nungesser said. “Are they going to take every person, regardless if they got kids, and they’re going to leave the kids behind?”
DHS said Cruz locked herself in the car and refused to lower the window and exit the vehicle as ordered, which forced agents to break the window to unlock the door. She is being held in federal custody pending removal proceedings, officials said.
Immigrant rights groups say the operation is applying a dragnet approach to racially profile Hispanic communities.
In the weeks before the crackdown began, dozens of families without legal status sought to make emergency custody arrangements with relatives, aided by pro bono legal professionals at events organized by advocacy groups in Kenner and throughout the New Orleans region.
“Children are going to school unsure whether their parents will be home at the end of the day,” Raiza Pitre, a member of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Louisiana, told a city council meeting Wednesday in Jefferson Parish, which includes Kenner.
Juan Proaño, CEO of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said he receives dozens of calls daily from Louisiana families worried about being separated from their children. His organization is helping Escalante navigate life without his mother, and he wants to prepare her son for the worst.
“He thinks she’ll be home in a couple of days, but it could be weeks or months, or she could be deported,” Proaño said.
Police chief praises enforcement crackdown
Cruz’s family was supposed to move into their new home next month. She leased it so that her son could finally sleep in his own room.
Kenner resident Kristi Rogers watched masked agents detain Cruz, a soon-to-be neighbor whom she had not yet met. Rogers said her heart went out to Cruz, and she wondered why she was targeted.
“I’m for them trying to clean up the criminals in our area, but I’m hoping that’s all they are detaining and deporting — the criminals,” Rogers said.
Jefferson and Orleans Parish court records did not reveal any criminal history for Cruz, and her son said she had a clean record.
In conservative Kenner, where Hispanics make up about a third of residents and Donald Trump won the last three presidential elections, Police Chief Keith Conley said last week that the federal immigration operation is a “prayer answered.”
As evidence of violence committed by immigrants in his city, Conley shared around a dozen press releases issued since 2022 documenting crimes in which the suspect was identified as being in the US illegally, including sex offenses, a killing, gang activity and shootings. He said residents were also at risk from immigrant drivers who are unlicensed and uninsured.
“I think that missions like this, by the government, are welcome because it’s going to change the landscape of the city and make improvements,” Conley said.
Teenagers try to protect younger siblings
Jose Reyes, a Honduran construction worker and landscaper whose family says he has lived in the US for 16 years, stayed home for weeks to avoid federal agents. But the father of four had to pay rent, so last week he drove to the bank around the corner.
Unmarked vehicles began following Reyes and pulled up alongside his car as he parked in front of his house in Kenner. A video reviewed by AP showed several agents leaping out and removing Reyes from his car as his sobbing daughters screamed for mercy.
“We were begging that they let him go,” said his eldest daughter, 19-year-old Heylin Leonor Reyes. “He’s the one who provides for food, pays bills, pays the rent. We were begging them because they’re leaving a family totally in the dark, trying to figure out what to do, figuring out where to get money to get by.”
Asked about the arrest, DHS said Jose Reyes committed an unspecified felony and had previously been deported from the US The agency did not elaborate.
His daughter, who works at a local restaurant, said her salary is not enough to keep a roof over the heads of her three younger siblings, two of whom she says were born in the US and are American citizens. Her mother is caring for the youngest, a 4-year-old, who watched agents grab her father from the doorway.
Reyes said she is also seeking a lawyer for her father’s case. But they need to locate him first.
“We were not given that information,” Reyes said. “We were given absolutely nothing.”
Reyes has tried to shield her siblings from the stress surrounding their father’s detention.
Escalante has not yet told his sister about their mother’s arrest, hoping Cruz can be released before he has to explain her absence.
“I’m technically the adult of the house now,” he said. “I have to make these hard choices.”