President Donald Trump on Tuesday said New Orleans will be the next city that will see a National Guard deployment, adding more federal resources to a city that is already expected to see an influx of immigration enforcement.
While discussing last week’s shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, DC, the president said during a Cabinet meeting that the shooter “probably was upset that the National Guard is so effective.”
As an aside, he then mentioned that the Guard is currently deployed in Memphis before adding “and we’re going to New Orleans pretty soon.”
“Over there, the governor called me. He’d like to have us go there. Gov. Landry, great guy, great governor. He’s asked for help in New Orleans, and we’re going to go there in a couple of weeks,” the president said.
Mayor-elect Helena Moreno said one of her primary concerns is the operation appears to be racially profiling rather than an attempt to arrest violent criminals.
“What [people] are seeing is what appears to be racial profiling of brown people and then going after these individuals and treating them like they are these significantly violent offenders. And they’re masked and then they’re thrown into vehicles and that is a very scary situation,” she said, adding that as a Latina, she finds the situation “gut-wrenching.”
“I know that I don’t look Latina, but my father very much does. And my father speaks with an accent. So to me that was very personal to me. So, this does feel personal in some ways because of my family.”
CNN previously reported that New Orleans is the latest Democrat-led city expected to see a surge of federal immigration authorities, possibly as soon as this week.
Trump has often cited surging crime as the impetus for troop deployment, but in New Orleans, like other cities which have seen troop deployments, crime is trending downwards.
Overall year-to-date crime incidents are down 16.7% while murders are down 6.4% from this time last year, according to data maintained by the city.
This post was updated with comments from Mayor-elect Moreno.