BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - A refugee advocate who spent 10 years in a refugee camp before gaining U.S. citizenship is calling for unity amid fears over federal immigration enforcement in Louisiana.

Operation Swamp Sweep, a 250 Border Patrol agent operation, is now underway in New Orleans. The goal of the two-month crackdown is 5,000 arrests across Southeast Louisiana and into Mississippi.

Dauda Sesay, who runs the Louisiana Organization for Refugees and Immigrants (LORI), said recent federal actions are affecting more than just criminals.

“A mother of two in Hammond, just a minor traffic stop; police pulled her over and handed her over to ICE,” Sesay said. “We saw how the people of Hammond bravely spoke up to address this.”

Sesay fled Sierra Leone during wartime and lived in a refugee c

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