In the hours after a special investigations unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement led a raid on a construction site for a federally funded city drainage project, city of New Orleans officials began to sound the alarm that the worksite for one of its critical infrastructure projects had been hit.
On Tuesday, May 27, agents raided the construction site for the Mirabeau Water Garden — a city stormwater management project in Gentilly, funded by a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, that broke ground in late 2023 after years of delays. According to a release from ICE, agents arrested 15 workers at the site who were suspected of being in the country without proper documentation. Conflicting reports from a local immigrants’ rights group, Union Migrante, which monitors ICE actions around the city, placed the arrest count at about two dozen.
According to internal city of New Orleans emails obtained and reviewed by Verite News, shortly after the raid, LaNitrah Hasan, director of the city’s Project Delivery Unit, notified department heads managing major projects that federal immigration agents had arrested more than a dozen people at the site so they could “alert any contractors utilizing undocumented workers” about the raid.
At least one department director took heed. Michael Karam, head of the Department of Parks and Parkways, directed personnel in his department to let contractors know about the raid so that they could “take the appropriate precautions with their employees given that ICE is now actively working in the city and may be targeting other city sites.”
As President Donald Trump and his administration continue to fall short of a campaign promise to deport millions of undocumented immigrants during his second term, ICE has ramped up immigration enforcement efforts with raids at workplaces, a dramatic reversal from the Biden administration, which banned immigration authorities from conducting mass workplace arrests in 2021.
That includes construction sites, where workers of Hispanic and Latinx descent make up roughly 30% of the labor force nationally, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In the same week that the drainage project was targeted, ICE agents raided the construction site of a large apartment complex in Tallahassee, Florida, arresting more than 100 workers. Construction experts say arrests that large essentially stall large scale projects.
The Trump administration has signalled that it will pull back — somewhat — on this approach to immigration enforcement. On Thursday, the Trump administration ordered a pause on work site raids for the farming, hospitality and food processing (like meat and seafood packing) industries, the New York Times reported. The order, however, did not mention construction sites. And on Sunday, Trump, speaking via social media, called on ICE to expand its efforts in large Democratically-run cities, though he did not mention New Orleans.
In an emailed statement sent to Verite News last week, city councilmember JP Morrell said he was “disturbed” by ICE’s raid at the Mirabeau Water Garden project.
“Arresting immigrant laborers who are working on crucial infrastructure projects to mitigate flooding is counterproductive, stupid and ridiculous,” Morrell said. “This [Trump Administration] seeks to breed fear in a community that is here to help and New Orleans will always be welcoming to anyone who chooses to call it home.”
The Water Garden, part of the $141 million Gentilly Resilience District, is just one of dozens of city construction projects in progress at the moment, including ongoing road and drainage work citywide through the Joint Infrastructure Recovery Request program — a $2 billion project funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Contacted about concerns over major projects stalling due to potential future ICE raids, Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s communications staff referred Verite News to an official statement.
“The City of New Orleans is dedicated to keeping the Mirabeau Water Garden project on track and finishing on schedule by the end of this year,” the statement said. “The City will continue to work on projects that impact our community while addressing our changing climate and critical infrastructure needs.”
Hispanic residents of the city and surrounding areas, regardless of immigration status, remain concerned that they will be targeted, said Alejandra Vazquez, a local DJ who plays music and hosts karaoke parties in some of the area’s Latin American restaurants. She said before the start of Trump’s second term, the venues she played in were busy with dining customers, now only a few groups of people stay and eat.
“Every Spanish business here is going bad,” Vazquez said. “People [are] afraid to go to the stores. People [are] afraid to go and eat at the restaurants. They’re afraid to drive. They’re afraid to go and bring the kids to school.”
Vazquez, who is Mexican-American, provides alerts to the Latinx community in the New Orleans metro region through her Facebook page, Explosion Latina NOLA. She said she received calls about the raids minutes after federal immigration agents surrounded the Mirabeau Water Garden project.
ICE declined an interview request from Verite News and did not provide comment in response to questions.
A page on the ICE website about worksite raids says they are meant to reduce unlawful employment, hold employers accountable for hiring undocumented laborers and protect “employment opportunities for the country’s lawful workforce.”
But, George Carillo, CEO of national think tank the Hispanic Construction Council, said immigrants in construction are adding to a workforce that is experiencing a shortage of roughly half a million workers.
“Across the country we are about 22% behind on [critical infrastructure] projects because we just don’t have the workforce,” Carrillo said in an interview with Verite News on Wednesday. “If we do this mass deportation of our undocumented immigrants, who’s gonna do the work? What happens to the way of life of the American people? … Where do we get our clean drinking water? How do we power our homes?”
Carrillo said targeting immigrant construction workers will cripple the construction industry.
“It doesn’t give the market confidence to want to develop more when it understands that it really does need its immigrant population in order to be able to continue to grow,” he said.
