5 January 2026
By Bobbi-Jeanne Misick
Contributing Writer
(Veritenews.org) — New Orleans community groups and civil rights organizations are urging the city’s leadership to include them in drafting changes to the New Orleans Police Department’s immigration policy, which has been in place for nearly a decade but is currently under review following pressure from top officials in state government.
In letters addressed to NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick and New Orleans Mayor-elect Helena Moreno, organizations, including Familias Unidas en Acción, ACLU of Louisiana and the Vera Institute of Justice, expressed concern at recent reports that top NOPD officials have been working with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill on a revised version of the department’s immigration policy. That policy, adopted in 2016, generally prohibits officers from inquiring about immigration status or directly participating in federal immigration enforcement efforts.
The department adopted the policy – and a number of others – under court order, as part of a long-running federal consent decree and has long been criticized by Murrill and Gov. Jeff Landry, both of whom are Trump allies and immigration hardliners.
Murrill has argued that local policies that limit cooperation with federal immigration agencies, such as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, run afoul of recently enacted state laws meant to bolster federal-local partnerships.
A federal judge lifted the consent decree last month. On Dec. 5, WWL-TV reported that Kirkpatrick had submitted a revised version of the immigration policy to Murrill for review. Then, on Dec. 18, Murrill announced on social media that she had met with Kirkpatrick and other NOPD officials “about keeping New Orleans residents and everyone who visits safe.”
The NOPD’s 2016 immigration policy was recently taken down from the department’s online policy manual.
“We certainly understand that recent changes in state law have created pressure on the New Orleans Police Department to change its policies,” reads the Dec. 17 letter to Kirkpatrick signed by more than 30 groups. “However, we are concerned that those changes appear to be taking place without community consultation.”
A more recent addressed to Moreno, sent Monday (Dec. 29), echoed those concerns.
“We are concerned that Superintendent Kirkpatrick has chosen to engage in this process behind closed doors with an Attorney General whose values do not align with those of our city nor consider the families [that] will be separated by the policy,” reads the letter to Moreno.
In the letters, the civil rights groups requested meetings with Kirkpatrick and Moreno to address how NOPD officers will engage with immigrants and with federal immigration enforcement agencies moving forward.
In a statement on December 29 of last year, NOPD spokesperson Reese Harper did not provide details on exactly what changes to the policy were under consideration. However, the statement emphasized that departmental policies “must align with state statutes and legal guidance” from the Attorney General’s Office and the New Orleans City Attorney’s Office.
“Our responsibility is public safety,” Kirkpatrick was quoted as saying in the statement. “My obligation is to follow the law, rely on legal guidance from the Attorney General & the City Attorney, uphold constitutional policing, and ensure the safety of everyone in New Orleans.”
The letters come amid a stepped up immigration enforcement effort – called operation Catahoula Crunch – that has sent hundreds of U.S. Border Patrol agents to southeast Louisiana. Just after that effort launched, Murrill told Kirkpatrick that the NOPD could be in violation of a 2024 state law prohibiting so-called “sanctuary policies” that limit local cooperation with ICE and Border Patrol.
When asked for a comment from Murrill, spokesperson Lester Duhé directed Verite News to the letter that she had addressed to Kirkpatrick regarding cooperation with federal immigration agencies and to the post on X. Moreno’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Despite the groups’ allegations that community groups have been left out of the revision process, last week, community organizers and immigrant rights attorneys met with Kirkpatrick to provide input on a new immigration policy, according to people who attended. However, according to one attendee, Kirkpatrick was less than forthcoming about the new language under consideration.
In a phone interview with Verite News, Leticia Casildo, executive director of Familias Unidas en Accion, a local nonprofit that supports immigrant communities in the greater New Orleans area, said Kirkpatrick “took a really defensive posture,” during the meeting, telling the group they were addressing their concerns to the wrong person and that she did not believe community members should be involved in drafting the new policy.
“When we asked her to present the policies that were being re-written, she flat out denied us,” Casildo said. “That for us is so worrisome because we know that [Gov. Jeff Landry] has this agenda to hurt the immigrant community.”
Earlier in 2025, Murrill sued the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office over its immigration policy – also the result of a federal consent judgement – that blocks the agency from honoring voluntary requests from federal immigration agents to hold immigrants already booked into the parish jail past their release dates. These requests are called immigration detainers. That case is ongoing.
Casildo was part of a large effort to pass the OPSO policy, – which stemmed from a 2011 federal court case that alleged that two foreign-born construction workers were held for months beyond their release dates at the request of ICE. The policy was put into effect in 2013 as a settlement in the case.
“Those were not policies that some lawyer made in an office,” Casildo said. “They were fought hard for with blood and sweat and tears.”
Jeremy Jong, an attorney at national immigrant support nonprofit Al Otro Lado, who was at the meeting with Kirkpatrick last week, said he worries about the NOPD jumping too hastily into partnerships with federal immigration agencies without strict legal guidance to guard against abuses.
“You don’t know how to keep whatever cooperation that you’re going to do with ICE in legal bounds,” Jong said, pointing to a recent $112 million verdict against the Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office in New York over allegedly improper ICE holds.
“If in the end there has to be a change – obviously we want a policy that cooperates with ICE to the least extent possible,” Jong said. “The details of that, I think personally, should be between the people most impacted and the police department.”
This article originally published in the January 5, 2026 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.