Redadas migratorias en Luisiana vacían los establecimientos en un barrio hispano – Chicago Tribune

By JACK BROOK and SARA CLINE

KENNER, Luisiana, USA. (AP) — The doors of Carmela Díaz’s boutique are closed, the tables are free of customers and no work in the kitchen. It is one of the many Hispanic traders who thrive in their day, among the Nicaraguan restaurants of Honduras, and who, in recent weeks, have been vacationing in neighborhoods with many cartels in Spanish, but each time with fewer people on the streets.

In Kenner, a city with a high concentration of Hispanic residents in Louisiana, a federal migration campaign that aimed to detain 5,000 people has devastated an economy that has struggled due to this year’s increase in enforcement, according to some entrepreneurs, and has had repercussions of great opportunity for both migrants and Estadounidense citizens.

“Cada vez venía menos gente,” said Llorando Díaz, who bought Taqueria La Conquistadora for several weeks before the anger of customers and workers at home. A few days ago, I wasn’t selling anything, I explained that it was the decision to leave the premises, “because I didn’t need to negotiate”.

Months later, convoys of federal vehicles began recording Kenner’s main commercial streets as the Department of National Security launched its latest migration campaign, including one that included adding to redadas in Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, North Carolina. The transeúntes post videos on the Internet of federal agents investigating people outside of Kenner’s trade and business.

The commander of the Patrulla Fronteriza, Gregory Bovino, was also present in the city, led by ataviados agents with tactical teams, to announce to journalists the start of the operation called Catahoula Crunch, like the great hunting dog that is the official dog of the state of Luisiana.

A community in tension

The state’s Hispanic population has grown in recent decades and contributed significantly to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina to help rebuild. In Kenner, just west of New Orleans, between the Misisipi River and Lake Pontchartrain, is about 30% of residents.

Díaz, originally from El Salvador, arrived in 2006 for three years on the Texas field. By opening food trucks, it was enough to buy a house in Kenner, and your business has since grown to a fleet of trucks and two brick-and-mortar restaurants.

But if all your belongings are surrounded by the redada, and Díaz will arrange haciendo entregas at the homes of people who will be detained by the agents.

“Don’t respect the people,” Díaz said, asserting that the authorities did not provide the documentation of the experts or carry out the investigations, because they responded to the grids and went ahead.

Autoridades say that buscan a violent delinquents

Department of National Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told the youth that federal agents were carrying out arrest procedures, while the agency has not released the full list of detainees.

“States can live without a way for violent illegal alien offenders to harm them, their families or their neighbors,” McLaughlin said in a statement. “In just 24 hours on earth, our agents have arrested violent criminals with histories that include homicide, forcible confinement, minor abuse, robot, wounding and assault.”

The office of the alcalde, Michael Glaser, who at the time was police chief, declined to comment on his position regarding the operation. But I said the draft “is under federal jurisdiction” and that I hope all agencies operating in the city will behave “professionally, legally and with respect for our community.” The city “neither participates nor ensures” in the campaign, aggregated.

The city’s police force is one of several local and state law enforcement agencies confirmed to form part of an Immigration and Youth Enforcement Service program that allows detainees to be held for possible deportation.

Temerity for vulnerable families

Sergio Pérez, a Guatemalan migrant and U.S. citizen who has lived in Kenner since 2010, said he has problems with anyone who needs a legal permit to be in the country and could be detained or deported. There is also concern that any Hispanic person could face abuse at the hands of federal agents, regardless of their immigration status.

Although Pérez considers Kenner his home, a place where it is easy to encounter his favorite dishes, such as the “hot of life”, a rich game of meat and greens, conflicts with the abandonment of the United States if he is expelled to his familiars.

“No nos quieren aquí,” Pérez demonstrated. “It’s like you’re in a foreign house and your guests are welcome.”

___

Cline informed from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Associated Press reporter Valerie González in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this post.

___

Brook is part of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a national nonprofit program that brings together periodicals in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

___

This story was translated into English by an AP editor with the help of a generative artificial intelligence tool.