Trump Wants “Model Cities” With High-Tech Police. New Orleans Just Said “No.”

After taking a “serious look” at applying for federal funding under the Trump administration’s Model Cities Initiative, the city leaders of cash-strapped New Orleans announced on August 31 that they will not apply for the controversial grant program.

The $300 million grant program for cities and local governments of more than 100,000 people offers to pay for high-tech policing and public safety infrastructure in exchange for local officials complying with federal mass deportation efforts, among other priorities. Critics say the initiative is the tip of the spear for deploying mass surveillance tech and indulging the authoritarian impulses of President Donald Trump, who has filled the streets of multiple cities with violent federal immigration agents and, in several cases, armed federal troops.

New Orleans is a majority-Black city steeped in civil rights history, and activists have been ringing alarm bells for weeks as Mayor Helena Moreno and other city leaders mulled over whether to apply for the grant amid pressure from the state’s GOP-controlled government to address an ongoing budget crisis.

Edith Romero, an organizer in New Orleans with the privacy group Eye on Surveillance, is grateful that local advocates and residents voiced their opposition and pushed the city away from applying for the grant.

“The Model Cities Initiative is a Justice Department grant program that comes with serious strings attached, including the sharing of immigration information between state, federal and local agencies,” Romero told Truthout in an email. “This means surveillance for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to separate families and terrorize our communities.”

According to the Justice Department, one of the policy “blueprints” for the Model Cities Initiative is President Donald Trump’s law enforcement surge in Memphis, Tennessee — another Democratic-led, majority-Black city in a GOP-controlled state. Launched about a year ago and involving 13 federal agencies as well as state and local law enforcement, the surge of what the White House calls “hypervigilant policing” in Memphis is still in effect. Residents and civil rights groups describe the surge as a racist and militarized federal “assault” and “occupation” and a new form of colonialism.

While the administration claims the Memphis task force is focused on “arresting violent criminals … seizing firearms, and locating missing children,” the operation, in actuality, was part of an aggressive immigration sweep. Officers have made large numbers of traffic stops to check for immigration status and have engaged in clearly documented racial profiling, according to local officials.

In Memphis, the Trump administration’s multi-agency Memphis Safe Task Force has been accused of terrorizing Black and Brown neighborhoods and retaliating against locals who attempt to record interactions with law enforcement on their phones in violation of their First Amendment rights, according to a lawsuit filed in May on behalf of four Memphis residents by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Federal troops and officers with the task force shot and killed at least four Black men in Memphis over a two-month period this summer. In at least two of the cases, autopsies and surveillance video footage cast doubt on initial claims by law enforcement that the victims pointed firearms at officers.

A National Guard team on the task force fatally shot 20-year-old Tyrin Johnson in the back as he was running away in July. Johnson’s family is calling for the guardsmen responsible to be criminally charged. Meanwhile, in New Orleans, the National Guard just finished its latest deployment to the historic French Quarter, where federal troops have mingled among tourists for the past eight months.

In a statement on August 31, New Orleans Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Michael Harrison cited unspecified questions about “legal issues” as he said that the city had decided against applying for the Model Cities Initiative. New Orleans joined Charlotte, North Carolina, and Billings, Montana, in publicly announcing that an application for Model Cities would not be submitted before the deadline passed on September 1.

“New Orleans has historically low crime, and it has been on a downward trend for years,” said Sarah Whittington, advocacy director at ACLU of Louisiana, in an interview. “So, there is a complete disconnection between reality and what the Trump administration is claiming that this funding will be used for.”

Just upriver from New Orleans, the notoriously segregated city of East Baton Rouge recently applied for the Model Cities grant, though civil rights organizers in that city are pushing back, Romero says. The $300 million in grant funding will be split between two to four cities chosen by the Trump administration. The Justice Department is now reviewing applications, and it remains unclear whether other cities applied besides East Baton Rouge.

Like the rest of Louisiana, New Orleans has a history of fiscal struggles. However, the budget crisis currently facing city leaders is profound, and voters in 2025 elected Moreno, a centrist Democrat viewed as a pragmatist, to deal with it. Harrison said the city did consider applying for the Model Cities Initiative because of the “significant investments” it could bring but ultimately decided against applying due to legal concerns around federal oversight.

Unlike traditional grants, the Model Cities Initiative requires cities to enter into a “cooperative agreement” with the Trump administration, which would have “substantial involvement” in the planning and implementation of projects funded with the grant. While cities could receive funding for prisoner reentry support programs and drug courts, they would also have to comply with Trump’s push to incarcerate and deport millions of people. The Justice Department also calls for the forced confinement of houseless people under the program, which is also known as involuntary commitment.

“Involuntary commitment is scary because it allows the government to decide who can and cannot handle their own affairs and be on streets, and it flies in the face of community-based care for reentry and success,” Whittington said. “This administration and the folks who would be in place and overseeing those programs do not necessarily have the community or those individuals’ best interests in mind, if all they are trying to do is fill beds.”

The grant also promotes the purchase of high-tech drones, automated license plate readers (ALPRs), and other mass surveillance technology that has faced intense public backlash in New Orleans and across the country. Additionally, New Orleans taxpayers could be on the hook for reimbursing the federal government for the cost of deploying federal law enforcement in the event of a vaguely defined “surge in violent crime or public disorder,” according to the Justice Department.

Local ordinances regulating the capture and storage of surveillance and personal data by law enforcement do not apply to the federal government, and Whittington said allowing the Trump administration to direct local police surveillance would expose the residents of New Orleans to federal data collection efforts without legal guardrails.

The New Orleans City Council recently voted to increase oversight of the city’s controversial surveillance drone program. That the Moreno administration even considered applying for the Model Cities grant was controversial given Louisiana’s history of white supremacy and the lingering trauma among Black residents from federal troop deployments during the fatal devastation following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

In December, ICE and Border Patrol rampaged through suburban cities outside of New Orleans that, unlike the city itself, maintain cooperation agreements with the Department of Homeland Security. The operation was widely seen by ICE critics and anti-racist locals as an abusive stunt by Gregory Bovino, the disgraced former Border Patrol commander. At the time, Moreno came under significant pressure from the White House to cooperate with the raids on one side, and frustrated constituents demanding an end to the federal invasion on the other.

Romero said activists are now urging leaders in East Baton Rouge to abandon the Model Cities Initiative as well. “We hope that New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana will continue to closely examine and reject these programs that promote surveillance as a false solution and put the safety of our communities in danger,” Romero said.