STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Communities in and around New Orleans have been preparing for days for possible immigration roundups by federal agents. They've seen enforcement in North Carolina last week, in Chicago and Los Angeles before that. Reporter Michael McEwen is with member station WWNO in New Orleans, one of the great American cities. Michael, good morning.
MICHAEL MCEWEN, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What are you seeing?
MCEWEN: I spent most of yesterday driving around the city just to get a sense of things. I began in the morning at a Home Depot parking lot, where usually you would find day laborers gathering, looking for work. Completely empty. And then I went to some soccer fields where there are several adult leagues that play on weekends, and some teams were struggling to find enough players to play. They're usually bustling, also, with families and street vendors selling stuff like baleadas and street tacos. They weren't even there. And people I tried to speak with said they were afraid to talk.
INSKEEP: So you get a sense of people maybe not showing up where they normally would show up and being fearful. What's that mean for your city?
MCEWEN: A lot of our economy here is really braced by immigrant labor, and that's really across all sectors. And then even without an official announcement about this operation, I've really seen this sense of fear and foreboding among some communities, and it's really palpable at this point. And some immigration advocates in the city have already begun providing training on how to interact with federal agents. Felix Allen is one organizer here in New Orleans. He's with the immigrant advocacy group Union Migrante.
FELIX ALLEN: You know, it's clear that the effect of these operations is just making kids stay home from school and folks stay home from work. Then it's not really about safety. It's about spreading fear among immigrant communities.
MCEWEN: And as news of this potential crackdown continues to spread here, some are telling me that they're going to avoid large family gatherings during the holidays.
INSKEEP: You said potential crackdown and no official announcement. Are federal agents actually coming?
MCEWEN: We're not entirely sure. Since last week, there's been talk about the Trump administration continuing this national campaign to arrest immigrants en masse here in southeast Louisiana and in these neighboring parts of Mississippi. Several news organizations, including The Associated Press, have reported that about 250 agents will be deployed here. We've been trying to get confirmation from the Department of Homeland Security for days. But we haven't gotten a response on what exactly the operation will be and when it will begin, and city officials haven't confirmed that either. But on Friday night, immigrant advocacy groups began circulating this video of marked Border Patrol vehicles and black government SUVs heading in a convoy into the city. And from there, the fear really grew.
INSKEEP: That's really interesting. What are state leaders saying about all this?
MCEWEN: So a statewide survey released earlier this year by LSU showed that among respondents, immigration was the least important issue - at the very bottom, actually. But Republicans, at least in state government here across the board, seem to be for it, and Governor Jeff Landry endorsed the potential operation just yesterday on the conservative network Newsmax. The U.S. speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, of course, has a district in Louisiana. He didn't reply to a request for comment either. But in New Orleans, which really has been for centuries shaped by immigrants from all over the world, the sense that I've been getting from locals is they're both afraid and upset. And they feel that this operation, if it happens, is kind of a betrayal of what makes the area what it is.
INSKEEP: Michael McEwen in New Orleans, Louisiana. Thank you so much, sir.
MCEWEN: Thank you.
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