Mississippi Public Broadcasting
Immigration raids start in Louisiana as Mississippi prepares for possible operations
By Elise Catrion Gregg
Immigration raids have begun in Louisiana, with the Associated Press reporting that enforcement operations could extend to southeastern Mississippi.
Right now, L. Patricia Ice, legal project director for the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, says things seem quiet in Mississippi, but it's been stressful for the immigrant community since the start of this year.
"All the immigrants that I speak to and that I know of, they're all worried about being detained," she told MPB. "Many of them are staying home; I've even told some to stay home as much as possible and to not go out, if you don't have to."
Sabrina Boswell, coalition coordinator for the Immigrant Alliance for Justice and Equity of Mississippi, said the current raids have amplified those fears.
"And when this news broke, we read the Associated Press article for it, and immediately it was like all the phones started going off, just all the organizations and the connections that we have in South Mississippi and New Orleans were reaching out," she said.
While the Department of Homeland Security's operations are reportedly focused on the coast in Mississippi, both L. Patricia Ice and IAJE's operations manager, Lauren Lewis, told MPB they've heard of agents spotted in Ridgeland recently.
Before the Sweeps
The first week of December, IAJE held a solidarity fast to unite the community.
Boswell said the headlines, along with that fast, have really galvanized people. She hopes that'll help people in Mississippi be ready and informed as operations continue.
"We definitely had a chance to not only do the fast but get people plugged in that have always been asking — 'How can I help?'"
A major focus of the fast was to educate people on their rights — for example, giving attendees cards to hand to officers if they're detained.
"It has your rights and says basically if you can't communicate in English or would prefer to stay silent, what you would say to the officer," Lewis explained. "So, 'These are my rights, I would like a lawyer... and I would rather not respond to this.'"
But, IAJE had organized that fast well before they'd even heard about the planned sweeps. For Ice, with MIRA, the sweeps are bad news, but they're hardly the only challenge her clients have faced recently.
She described how one client went to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office for a regular appointment — one of dozens of other folks with appointments that day.
"She went on time...I think 8 or 9 in the morning," Ice said, adding that her client lives about two hours from that office. "Then the office closed at 2 p.m., and she was left standing outside with a whole bunch of other people."
The office told people they could make new appointments online and gave them a QR code. When Ice and her client tried to use it, it didn't work. When they called to make that appointment, the person on the other line told them they had to use the QR code.
"My client was supposed to check in in August and she could not — to this day," Ice said. "People like her are really terrified because she missed her appointment even though she was there at the appointed time."
While there are still no major operations reported in Mississippi, the waiting in the meantime is difficult and confusing.
"Some of them are afraid to send their children to school, and it is a sad situation," Ice said. "If the news reports are accurate, they will be in Mississippi en masse, but we just don't know when or where. I think that part of the point is to terrorize."
For Boswell, it's a balancing act in how to prepare for DHS making their way to Mississippi.
"We never want to create nervousness and make people feel like they can't leave their homes," she told MPB. "At the same time, we want to make sure everyone's just as mindful as they can be and as prepared as they can be too."
What's happening in Mississippi
Mississippi is also ramping up state policies aimed at immigrants.
Just before Thanksgiving, Commissioner Sean Tindell of Mississippi's Department of Safety posted on social media that Mississippi had "removed" of more than 300 commercial truck drivers from the roads recently over "English-communication standards".
Tindell said the initiative was to ensure roadway safety. When asked how many of the license revocations in Mississippi were crash-related, he said he wasn't sure.
"Probably most of them are due to standard inspections that the Commercial Transportation Enforcement Division is allowed to do," Tindell told MPB.
Tindell also didn't immediately have numbers as to how big an issue language-related crashes are in the state.
"As it comes to crashes in Mississippi, we've actually seen improvement and gotten some recognition from the federal agencies that are heavily involved with commercial trucking across the country," he said.
Tindell said they "referred" around 145 drivers in Mississippi to ICE and Border Patrol. He added that they do so when they believe they have evidence that a driver is undocumented.
Lorena Quiroz, executive director of IAJE, says there are levels to speaking a second language. Not speaking English perfectly, she said, doesn't mean a driver is unsafe.
"A person can be a limited English speaker, and yet be able to understand the signs, be able to comprehend maneuvering, be able to understand the dangers, and yet not communicate clearly if an officer stops them," she said.
Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith is also co-sponsoring a bill that would require English proficiency tests nationally in order for drivers to receive a commercial motor vehicle license, claiming that there's been an increase in large commercial truck accidents driven by "foreign nationals in the country illegally".
The most recent data published in April on large truck crashes from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows a decrease in fatal crashes overall — down about 8% in 2023 from 2022. Numbers from 2023 are also lower than 2021.
In November, state auditor Shad White announced that his legislative priorities for 2026 would also include bills targeting immigrants.
Those priorities include a bill to make it a state crime for an immigrant to be without legal status, allowing Mississippi law enforcement to arrest immigrants without federal involvement.
He's also proposing a fee on remittances — money sent to other countries, often by immigrants in the U.S. supporting family back home — with fees used to fund the Immigration Enforcement Grant Fund.
Ice, MIRA's legal project director, said she's not sure if those are viable proposals.
"We've already had bills like that before that have been introduced, and they did not really pass," she said.
Several states have recently attempted to pass laws that criminalize immigrants for being undocumented, but many of those have been blocked by the courts, with decisions based on a 2012 case that held immigration enforcement to be under the federal government's purview.
But that doesn't necessarily provide immigrants with foolproof security.
"As a child of immigrants, it's strange living through these times, wondering if the things you're hearing in the news or seeing online, just wondering if these things can actually happen," said Lewis.
State actions are one more thing for immigrants in Mississippi to contend with.
"It is designed to keep you overwhelmed and just designed to keep you distracted almost," Boswell said.