'Operation Catahoula Crunch' Begins In New Orleans

• Bovino has history of violating court orders and lying about protest violence.
• Administration claims crackdown targets 'violent criminals', despite most detainees having no criminal records.
• Protests and accusations of police brutality are expected, but government will likely side with agents.

Welp, the Trump administration’s massive (and massively oppressive) immigration crackdown tour is still on the road. It’s next stop? New Orleans.

That’s right, y’all — from the people who gave you “Operation Midway Blitz” in Chicago and “Operation Charlotte’s Web” in Charlotte, N.C. — get ready for “Operation Catahoula Crunch,” which was announced Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security, which, apparently, thinks it’s quite amusing to come up with cute and snappy but not very clever titles for operations that, as I’ve written before, “separate families, upends people’s lives, detains and deports them without due process, and disappears them to countries that may or may not be their countries of origin won’t make the Trump administration seem any less evil.”

And who is heading up the government-sanctioned civil rights violation tour in New Orleans? None other than Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who was in charge of the Chicago operation, which saw massive protests, rebukes from city and state leaders, and federal judges, and reports that the overwhelming majority of immigration detainees weren’t criminals.

Bovino also took charge during operations in Charlotte, which saw massive protests, rebukes from city and state leaders, and reports that the overwhelming majority of immigration detainees weren’t criminals.

In fact, Bovino has been ripped to shreds multiple times by federal judges for violating their orders restricting certain uses of force and for lying about protest violence to justify it.

So, sure, go ahead and send him to another city to repeat the same behavior.

From CBS News:

Bovino said they’d be in the Big Easy “until the mission is accomplished,” and that so far they’ve arrested “a lot, and still counting.” There are “several hundred agents” spread across the New Orleans area, Bovino said.

In a statement earlier Wednesday, DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the administration targeted New Orleans because of local policies that limit cooperation between local law enforcement officials and federal immigration authorities. 

“Catahoula Crunch targets include violent criminals who were released after arrest for home invasion, armed robbery, grand theft auto, and rape,” McLaughlin added. “Under President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem, we are restoring law and order for the American people.”

The Trump administration appears to read from the same script everywhere its immigration enforcement operations travel. Ignoring its own data that consistently shows more than 70% of those detained by ICE and Border Patrol agents had no criminal records, the administration claims its immigration crackdown is about ridding these cities of “violent criminals.”

We can also expect that when the protests inevitably begin, and agents start getting accused of police brutality against civilians, government spokespeople who are not on the scenes of protests will take their agents’ accounts at face value and present them as fact when giving statements to the media. And they’ll continue to do so even if the courts find that agents and their DHS handlers are lying.

And rinse, and repeat.

SEE ALSO:

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