Martin Koste

Earlier this year, the administration deported him wrongfully to a prison in his native El Salvador.

Obriga Garcia originally entered the U.S.

illegally but is shielded from being sent to El Salvador.

He also faces criminal charges for human smuggling.

Martin Koste, NPR News.

Federal immigration authorities haven't said how many arrests they've made since this operation started on Wednesday, but volunteer spotters say they haven't seen that many.

Rachel Tabor is with a group that's been teaching people strategies to avoid arrest and deportation.

Tabor says she does worry about a quote, siege situation in which the feds try to outlast the ability of people to stay away from work or school.

The Department of Homeland Security has not said how long the operation will last.

Martin Koste, NPR News, New Orleans.

The Department of Homeland Security says the operation will target, quote, violent criminals who are released after arrest for home invasion, armed robbery, grand theft auto, and rape, unquote.

But many foreign-born people here believe the dragnet will be wider, as it has been in other cities.

and will include people who are in the country illegally but have not committed crimes.

Many shops in a Latino part of the suburb of Kenner are now closed, and Ayman Abdel says people in the neighborhood are afraid to go out.

Normally there would be a lot of cars, people coming and going, shopping and working, but right now there's nothing, he says.

Martin Koste, NPR News, New Orleans.

For more than a century, courts have read the 14th Amendment to mean any child born on U.S.

soil is an American citizen.

But the Trump administration says that reading is too broad.

It says the right should be reserved for people who are, in the words of the amendment, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.