The Stagecraft Behind the New Orleans Immigration Raids

“Operation Catahoula Crunch is making New Orleans safer by finding and arresting illegal aliens who endanger this community,” Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino. published on X shortly after his roving force of immigration forces arrived in the city. In a similar PR offensive, the Department of Homeland Security recently launched the “Worst of the Worst” campaign. websitewhich chronicles some of the arrests that federal agents implementing the Trump White House's mass deportation policy have made across the country. (Legal resolution of these arrests, as well as 13 cases dismissed in court Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago does not appear after Bovino's campaign.)

And despite attempts online to portray Trump's raids as heroic peacekeeping exercises, Commander Bovino's team in New Orleans appears to have played by different rules, judging by their behavior last Saturday. A caravan of Louisiana state troopers escorted three rental cars full of federal agents, including Bovino himself, to an apartment complex in Kenner, Louisiana. A secondary caravan, consisting mainly of journalists and protesters, followed. State police closed the road at the complex, forcing both groups out of their cars and onto the street, where Bovino and his agents could approach them. Federal agents drove slowly down the road, stopping for several minutes. The small group of protesters grew, supported by neighbors living in the apartments.

Safe inside the SUV, surrounded by agents with guns, Bovino sent a message to his phone from the parking lot of the apartment complex. Messages, recorded journalist Ford Fisher, offers some insight into both Bovino's mind and the state of the operation in Louisiana.

“No matter how you look at it, we are a huge destructive team. The idiots can't do anything to us… I can't understand why DHS is hiding us when we present them with strategy on a silver platter,” Bovino wrote to a contact identified as “Diz.” A few minutes later, Bovino summed up his strategy on the ground that day: “There's a riot at an apartment complex in Kenner. We're using tags and things like that.”

The “outrage” was hardly widespread. The protesters were scream at the agents as they sat in their cars with the windows open, but they did not offer any physical resistance. After tagging cars along the entire road, border guards came out and knocked on the door. The sound of whistles pierced the air, and one loud protester shouted to his neighbors not to open their doors: “They can't come in unless you give them verbal permission.”

The stunt seemed to be a way to rile up the neighbors more than anything else. And photographs showing Bovino's messages cast doubt on the operation's purported legitimate goals. First, why would a targeted law enforcement operation rely on placing tags in the parking lot of an apartment complex located in a city with largest Hispanic population in Louisiana? It appeared to be the “Kavanaugh stop”—the practice of racial profiling of residents recently authorized by the U.S. Supreme Court—on steroids.

Bovino's mention of DHS “hiding” his team raises further questions. This certainly contradicts his constant appearances in the media and his photo ops in gas station snack aisles.

Perhaps Bovino was simply providing a way out, because the New Orleans raids don't produce the kind of power spectacle he puts on in Chicago and other places. According to the Associated Press, his team just completed 38 arrests during the first four days of Operation Catahoula Crunch. And of the 38 people detained, only nine had a criminal record – a percentage that is broadly in line with national data on immigration raids, which show that more than 70 percent those arrested had no criminal record.

At least Bovino's pen pal seemed to remember the team's lackluster display of strength. “You need to do interviews. Fox and friends want you. We'll bring up the low numbers conversation,” Diz Bovino wrote.

However, when he doesn't feel like he's being hidden, Commander Bovino stands firm in his opinion. “Great ease is great difficulty for illegal immigrants,” Bovino boasted this week on X.