Today, the Trump Administration has deployed federal agents to New Orleans, Louisiana and has indicated National Guard troops will soon be deployed. This follows federal National Guard deployments in other states, including Washington D.C., Memphis, Chicago and Los Angeles.
In response, Legal Defense Fund (LDF) Director of Strategic Initiatives Jin Hee Lee issued the following statement:
“The Trump administration’s campaign to target some of the most vulnerable members of our society continues in alarming fashion through this latest federal overreach in New Orleans. These tactics instill fear among residents, resulting in significant harm through aggressive arrests, excessive use of force, unnecessary detentions, and mass deportations. The federal incursion in New Orleans, which is likely to soon include military forces, advances harmful stereotypes about immigrants of color and wastes scarce federal resources while peddling the fiction that it is for the sake of public safety.
“But the people of New Orleans – like everyone in our country – deserve better. America is, and always will be, a nation of immigrants. Their hard work and industriousness helped forge the nation we know today. No amount of federal enforcement or fearmongering will change that. We condemn these deployments, which do nothing to improve public safety, and all attempts to use brute force against our most vulnerable communities under the false guise of promoting public safety.”
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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation’s first civil rights law organization. LDF’s Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF. Please note that LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights.
