Federal Border Patrol agents arrested and deported dozens of people in a sweeping immigration enforcement operation along the Interstate 10 corridor in Louisiana and Mississippi in late April, officials said, part of the Trump administration’s widening crackdown on immigration.
The enforcement action, described by federal officials as a “highway interdiction operation” dubbed “Operation Magnolia,” resulted in the arrest of 48 people from Mexico, Nicaragua, Kazakhstan, Honduras, Colombia, and Guatemala who are accused of illegally entering the United States, Border Patrol spokesperson Rob Brisley said in a written statement.
Border Patrol released a few additional details about the arrests. However, when combined with records filed in federal court, the announcement reveals how the Trump administration uses vehicle monitoring and traffic stops to carry out its immigration agenda in New Orleans and throughout the Gulf South.
Border Patrol did not reveal the identities of those detained in the highway operation but did say that eight of them would be prosecuted in federal court for illegal reentry to the United States, which is a separate criminal proceeding from the civil process migrants face when they appear in immigration court.
As Trump rallies the Justice Department’s resources to back his immigration agenda, federal prosecutors around the country are pursuing an unprecedented number of criminal prosecutions, the majority of which are against individuals whose sole alleged crimes are reentering the country after being deported. Historically, the agency chose to defer such cases to the immigration court system.
Aside from the detainees charged with illegal reentry, Brisley stated that the recent Border Patrol operation resulted in the arrest of one person accused of being in the country illegally and who would be charged with using false documents.
Brisley stated that three US citizens are also facing “various federal charges” as a result of the operation. He stated that Border Patrol agents recovered $104,000 in cash, firearms, ammunition, and other “illegal contraband.”
The apparent policy of detaining people along major highways comes as Trump employs a broader range of techniques to carry out his immigration goal, including detaining students on college campuses and ramping up criminal prosecutions for low-level immigration felonies.
Louisiana has emerged as a focal point of that agenda, thanks in part to its high concentration of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities.
Last month, the administration made headlines in Monroe after a 2-year-old girl appeared to have been deported despite pleas from immigration attorneys and the girl’s father to ICE officials, including in an earlier legal filing that claimed she was born in Louisiana and was a US citizen, according to an order issued by a Trump-appointed federal judge. According to ICE officials, the child’s mother, who has also been deported, requested that her daughter stay with her, but immigration advocates have challenged this claim.
Brisley failed to answer questions concerning the identities of those arrested along I-10 last month, as well as the specific locations of the arrests and how Border Patrol decides whether to submit immigration detainees to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution.
Traffic stops a part of enforcement tactics
Operational details, such as how Border Patrol agents choose who to stop and detain during the operation, were not released.
However, recently, agents in New Orleans appear to have relied on traffic stops to hold individuals accused of illegally reentering the country, according to federal court documents. In several instances, they did so after monitoring homes and vehicles.
Border Patrol agents in New Orleans stopped a red GMC pickup vehicle on April 10 because they suspected it was owned and operated by illegal immigrants, according to Border Patrol Intelligence Agent Francisco Del Valle in an affidavit.
The agents checked the truck’s plates and discovered that it was registered in Mississippi to what Del Valle and his colleagues suspected was a “fictitious” person. Border Patrol officials consider such registration as a regular method employed by illegal immigrants, Del Valle noted, “because of the strict identification laws at the Louisiana Department of Motor Vehicles.”
The authorities halted the vehicle and apprehended the driver, Waulter Homero Raymundo-Marcos of Honduras, as well as four Guatemalan and Honduran passengers suspected of being in the country without proper papers.
In other situations, Border Patrol agents acknowledged surveilling homes where undocumented people are thought to reside, then following vehicles leaving those places and conducting traffic stops. On March 27, agents in Terrytown detailed in an affidavit monitoring a home inhabited by a “previously deported Guatemalan national.”
When a Toyota Tundra drove away from the house around 7 a.m., Border Patrol agents pulled it over and detained the driver, Neri Osbeli Argueta-Chun, and one passenger, Frailyn Argueta-Jeronimo, on suspicion of reentering the country illegally.
