News

Louisiana’s top criminal justice official has warned New Orleans’ police chief she risks breaking state and federal laws if her officers don’t actively support ongoing federal immigration enforcement efforts in the city.

Attorney General Liz Murrill sent a letter Friday to NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick saying the department’s policies “conflict with current state law and also may be interpreted as ‘sanctuary’ policies.”

The letter comes as hundreds of agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have converged on New Orleans and the surrounding area for what the Department of Homeland Security has labeled Operation Catahoula Crunch. The Trump administration has said the campaign, similar to those elsewhere in the country, targets the “worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens.”

Federal officials have so far identified fewer than 10 people detained in its New Orleans-area sting as having criminal records, and it has not reported how many total have been taken into custody. In comparable ICE and Border Patrol operations in other areas, only a fraction of those arrested have had criminal backgrounds.

The superintendent has also described the immigration efforts as civil matters, as opposed to criminal. Murrill challenged that stance in her letter to Kirkpatrick.

“There is no absolution in suggesting that immigration enforcement laws are a ‘civil issue,’ and, on that basis, NOPD cannot assist or support ICE and CBP in their enforcement efforts,” the attorney general wrote.

Murrill also noted a state law approved in 2024 that prohibits cities from adopting “sanctuary policies” that are contrary to immigration laws, adding that she has the authority to sue any local agency that puts any such ordinances or rules in place.

The attorney general is challenging the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, which operates the city jail, in federal court over its refusal to honor detainer requests from ICE or share information with the agency on the immigration status of people in custody. The sheriff’s office policy has been in place since 2013 as part of a settlement in a federal case involving two immigrant construction workers who were kept in jail at ICE’s request after they had completed their sentences for minor offenses.

The NOPD’s policy is linked to a 2013 federal consent decree meant to address the department’s history of corruption and unconstitutional police practices. It included measures to curb racial profiling, which potentially impacts how immigration enforcement is conducted.

But less than two weeks before federal agents launched their operation in New Orleans, a federal judge terminated the consent decree at the request of the U.S. Department of Justice and city leaders.