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New Orleans ‘crime camera’ nonprofit sparks fears of construction worker surveillance
Project NOLA recently announced free cameras for French Quarter businesses and said it had monitored sidewalk construction sites for the presence of workers, many of whom are Latino immigrants
Edith Romero
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A controversial New Orleans nonprofit that operates a centralized system of thousands of “crime cameras” appears to be using its vast surveillance network against workers.
Project NOLA, founded in 2009 by former New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) Officer Bryan Lagarde, operates and monitors more than 5,000 cameras mounted on private property across the city, purportedly to prevent crime. However, according to a June 24 Facebook post from Project NOLA, the organization’s extensive surveillance system may also be used to monitor local construction workers.
The post claimed that construction fences erected around local businesses in the French Quarter had hurt foot traffic and sales, and also blocked Project NOLA cameras, resulting in a slew of unsolved crimes. The post asserted that these fences were not needed as construction work was not actually underway.
“At one point last year, Project NOLA staff analyzed 30 days of video footage, only to find that meaningful construction work had occurred on just a few days that month,” the post said. Project NOLA offered free cameras to French Quarter businesses with construction fencing outside their storefronts.
Construction work in the French Quarter has been contentious, forcing some local businesses to permanently shutter. However, advocates caution against surveilling construction workers, who, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, are overwhelmingly Latino immigrants.
Jacinta González, a surveillance expert, organizer, and one of the authors of the recent report, “The Tech Behind ICE: Oligarchs, Immigration Enforcement, and the Threat to Democracy,” said Project NOLA’s post is “really concerning.”
“Workers have often faced the brunt of these types of surveillance and criminalization. When they try to report labor abuses, human rights abuses, many times that is used against them, and they are retaliated against for organizing,” González said, referencing the 2019 case of Delmer Joel Ramirez Palma, an undocumented construction worker and whistleblower who reported safety lapses at the hotel construction site where he worked before the building collapsed, killing three workers. Ramirez was deported days after doing an interview with a local news outlet.
Lagarde told Prism that Project NOLA does not conduct live surveillance of construction crews.
“Last year, some French Quarter crime camera hosts affected by street closures asked us to review a month’s worth of footage to help verify if street work was actually conducted,” Lagarde said in an email. “This analysis simply involved reviewing footage to see how many days that month people wearing construction vests were observed working within the closed off streets.”
He also said that his organization “is not involved in immigration matters” and that Project NOLA does not assist federal immigration agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection.
However, local legal advocates say they have good reason to fear that Project NOLA’s surveillance footage could be used to target immigrants.
In a September 2025 Facebook post, Project NOLA noted that it shares live video feeds with local and state agencies, including the Louisiana State Police (LSP) and the Plaquemines Parish Sheriff’s Office, both of which are enrolled in ICE’s 287(g) Program, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initiative that deputizes local law enforcement to act as immigration agents. Fifty-five law enforcement agencies in Louisiana are currently enrolled in the program.
If you’re willing to say that you provide a live feed to state police, and state police has a 287(g) agreement with ICE, [then] ICE has that access, and there’s not going to be anything that you can do to cut that off.
Sarah Whittington, American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana
“If you’re willing to say that you provide a live feed to state police, and state police has a 287(g) agreement with ICE, [then] ICE has that access, and there’s not going to be anything that you can do to cut that off,” said Sarah Whittington, advocacy director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana.
A community advocate, who did not want their name published due to safety concerns, said there are “many examples” of LSP working with ICE. They shared one instance in which a Hispanic resident was stopped by a state trooper while driving in Lafayette and then subsequently detained by ICE after the LSP officer shared the driver’s location with nearby ICE agents.
Lt. Kate Stegall, LSP public affairs supervisor, said in a statement, “LSP frequently works with all of our federal and local partners during law enforcement related matters.”
According to Whittington, the ACLU is aware that state police are going beyond merely “helping” or “providing information” to federal immigration agencies.
“They are full-on collaborating, colluding, and working for and with ICE at this point,” she said. “And they are getting paid a lot for it.” Whittington cited documents leaked earlier this year that detailed around $925,000 in payouts from ICE to LSP.
In his email to Prism, Lagarde would not discuss Project NOLA’s internal policies that he said prohibit collaboration between federal immigration agencies and its cameras’ live feed hosts in law enforcement, including LSP. Instead, he cited fine print on the organization’s website indicating that Project NOLA “does not use Facial Recognition to identify or locate individuals possibly facing deportation from the United States or involved in peaceful protests, unless an individual is also wanted for a Felony Crime.”
This is not the first time Project NOLA has come under fire for its use of surveillance tech. Last year, The Washington Post revealed that NOPD secretly and unlawfully relied on Project NOLA’s private network of more than 200 live facial recognition cameras to search for alleged suspects of crimes.
“Private surveillance companies have frequently lied to city governments, to the public, about how their technology is used and what the sharing capabilities are,” González told Prism.
Project NOLA’s recent post about the construction fences came just weeks after CNN reported that DHS is planning to carry out more workplace raids. Funding for the federal agency has also increased exponentially during President Donald Trump’s second term. According to the “The Tech Behind ICE” report, the federal budget for DHS last year was $6 billion.
The potential surveillance of construction workers in New Orleans, including migrant workers who rebuild the city after each hurricane season, alarmed Louisiana immigration and civil rights advocates—especially in light of DHS’ enforcement operations in New Orleans last year. Known as “Catahoula Crunch,” the immigration raids caused widespread fear and devastation in immigrant communities.
“DHS has been very clear that they are going to use every surveillance tool possible to carry out their mission–and their mission is to deport as many people as possible,” said Jeremy Jong, a New Orleans resident and staff attorney at Al Otro Lado, a binational organization providing free legal and humanitarian aid to immigrants.
The community advocate told Prism that they don’t feel safe knowing that Project NOLA cameras are constantly surveilling the public and, potentially, immigrant workers.
“I think that they’re trying to use this Facebook post to get other folks to get cameras [and] create more surveillance,” they said. “That’s not going to stop the crime, and we know that, but they are also going to use this [network] to continue spying on the Hispanic communities or the immigrant communities.”
Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Rashmee Kumar, Copy Editor
