Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry told Newsmax on Wednesday he welcomes the Trump administration's expected deployment of federal border agents to New Orleans for Operation Swamp Sweep, calling the two-month crackdown "commonsense" public safety, not a political stunt.
Roughly 250 agents from the Department of Homeland Security reportedly will begin staging in New Orleans ahead of a Dec. 1 launch, then fan out across southeast Louisiana and into Mississippi with a goal of arresting about 5,000 people over two months.
The sweep is the latest in a series of high-intensity immigration operations in Chicago, Los Angeles and and Charlotte, North Carolina.
"I don't know what all the fuss is about, because we work with our federal agencies all the time to take dangerous criminals off the street," Landry told Newsmax's "American Agenda."
"Just because they're in the country illegally shouldn't make them immune from being arrested."
Landry said the focus is on people with serious criminal records.
"This is going out and taking dangerous criminals — people who have broken the law, who we know are wanted, who have been charged with a crime — and taking them out of our communities," he said.
"Why would we want dangerous criminals on our streets?"
Asked how his constituents would react, Landry challenged anyone opposed to the operation.
"I don't know who would not be happy taking murderers, rapists, child predators, people who are preying on the innocent off the street," he said.
"If you can find those people, send them to me. I really want to check what's going on in their brains."
Landry pointed to recent cases he said underscore the risk.
"Just this week, our wildlife and fisheries agents arrested an illegal in the state of Louisiana with a multitude of kilos of cocaine," he said, adding that an illegal immigrant was also accused of killing a high school basketball player in St. Mary Parish.
Landry has already ordered state and local police to align more closely with federal immigration enforcement through an initiative he dubbed Operation GEAUX, pushing agencies into 287(g) agreements with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
He also signed a sweeping package of tough-on-crime bills, including measures expanding executions and limiting parole.
Landry framed Swamp Sweep as a logical extension of that agenda.
"We want Louisiana to be a safe place," he said.
"Irrespective of whether you're an American citizen who has committed a violent crime or an illegal alien who has committed a violent crime, we want to take those people off of our streets."
He also blamed Democrats in Washington, D.C., for the migrant surge that Swamp Sweep is now targeting, accusing them of having "literally dog-whistled millions of migrants" across the border "irrespective" of who they were.
"And you don't think many of them were nefarious characters? We know they were," Landry said.
"And that's what we're trying to rid the country of. That's what the president is trying to do."
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