Even before protesters flooded into the New Orleans City Council meeting on Thursday, Helena Moreno, the mayor-elect, had her hands full.
Shortly after her election in October, she learned that the city’s budget deficit was far worse than expected. Then the Border Patrol arrived. And many residents have viewed the outgoing mayor, LaToya Cantrell, as essentially absent since her indictment on corruption charges in August, adding to the pressure on Ms. Moreno.
At the Council meeting, protesters shouted that the city needed to push back more forcefully on federal immigration agents. The protesters became so rowdy that the Council called a recess, and police officers steered them out.
“Happy Thursday, everyone,” said Councilman Oliver Thomas, moments before Ms. Moreno, a member of the Council since 2018, took her seat at the middle of the dais.
New Orleans has had plenty of tough years, but 2025, which began with a terrorist attack in the French Quarter and is ending with a flood of federal agents in immigrant neighborhoods, has stood out. Ms. Cantrell has pleaded not guilty to charges of using public funds to facilitate a romantic relationship with her bodyguard, but her indictment fueled a craving for new leadership.
A former television journalist who has worked in local politics for nearly two decades, Ms. Moreno, a Democrat, broke ahead of 10 other candidates in the October election, winning voters with promises to devote considerable attention to quality-of-life concerns and end chronic dysfunction.
“As soon as I won the election — I mean, not 24 hours later — I think people were looking at me like, ‘OK, go to Helena now,’” Ms. Moreno said in an interview this week. “So I’ve been taking on a lot of the different responsibilities.”
Those responsibilities now include voicing the frustration of many residents with the Border Patrol operation, which began on Wednesday.
Ms. Moreno, who will be the city’s first Hispanic mayor, has defended immigrants who came here to work, with many helping to fuel New Orleans’s hospitality industry. She has asked the agents, led by Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official, not to wear masks, and to target only people with serious criminal histories. With the City Council, she created an online reporting system for people to upload videos showing possible abuses by federal immigration agents.
Ms. Moreno said at a news conference on Friday that she and the City Council had written a letter to Mr. Bovino, requesting that he hold public briefings to share data on arrests and that his agents refrain from “discriminatory enforcement.”
“This operation is actually causing harm for the city of New Orleans,” Ms. Moreno said at the news conference, noting that businesses were closing, workers were staying home and residents were walking around in fear.
Still, many people in more conservative suburbs of New Orleans welcome the operation, and several residents of the city have approached Mr. Bovino to thank him and ask for selfies with him.
In interviews, several Hispanic residents said they felt a kinship with Ms. Moreno, 48, whose father is Mexican. He and her American mother met at the University of Wisconsin, fell in love and moved to Veracruz, Mexico, where Ms. Moreno was born.
The family relocated to Houston when she was 8. In 2001, Ms. Moreno moved to New Orleans and pursued a journalism career, anchoring morning broadcasts on WDSU-TV, an NBC affiliate.
When she was a child, Mexicans would often call her “Güerita.” In Spanish, it is an affectionate term for fair-skinned or blond people.
Her father, however, has dark skin. As she sees images of Latinos being randomly approached and detained by agents around the country, Ms. Moreno said, it is difficult not to think of him and other friends and relatives.
“I don’t think anyone disagrees with going after the most violent individuals,” she said. “But what we’re seeing as this operation sweeps across the country, and is now here in New Orleans, is that it seems there’s profiling of brown people.”
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security described the “racial profiling” accusations as “reckless and categorically false,” saying that “what makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S. — NOT their skin color, race or ethnicity.”
Ms. Moreno is walking a tightrope familiar to other mayors of cities that have been targeted by the Trump administration: speaking out on behalf of immigrant communities while trying not to further provoke the White House.
But unlike the mayors of Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, N.C., who also saw federal immigration crackdowns, Ms. Moreno does not have a Democratic governor for support. Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, a Republican, has welcomed the Border Patrol operation, saying it will make the state safer. He has also asked Mr. Trump to deploy the National Guard in New Orleans to help fight crime; on Tuesday, Mr. Trump said he intended to send troops before Christmas.
Ms. Moreno, a progressive who was known to work with Republicans when she was in the State Legislature, “doesn’t really try to stand out.” said Edward Chervenak, a professor of political science at the University of New Orleans who also directs its Survey Research Center. “She just puts her head down and does her job.”
Her victory was still fresh when the City Council learned in October that New Orleans had a $160 million budget deficit — up from an earlier estimate of about $100 million — and that it may not be able to make payroll through the end of the year. The deficit was caused in part by insufficient budgeting for police overtime, delayed federal funding and overly optimistic revenue projections, according to the state auditor. Council members had been surprised by the deficit amount and angered that the mayor’s office did not clue them in.
The city took out a high-interest loan to pay off most of it, and Ms. Moreno led efforts on passing a 2026 budget that closes the deficit and aims to stabilize the city’s finances. During the process, there was tension between Ms. Moreno’s team and the Cantrell administration, which has been blamed for the budget crisis.
Ms. Cantrell’s office did not make the mayor available for an interview, but Terry Davis, her spokesman, said in a statement on Friday that “the mayor-elect team has a right to put forth their plans and proposals.” Speaking at the North American Mayors Summit Against Antisemitism earlier this week, Ms. Cantrell said that the city “stands in solidarity with every resident within our community.”
Some have questioned whether Ms. Moreno, who has been on the Council for eight years, can cure the dysfunction in city government. During the mayoral race, Ms. Moreno countered such skepticism by arguing it was the council members who ensured the city remained afloat in recent years.
Liz Murrill, Louisiana’s Republican attorney general, criticized Ms. Moreno in October after the budget crisis came to light, saying she and the other council members had not been fiscally responsible.
“I want Mayor-elect Moreno to be successful, but this is not a great start,” Ms. Murrill said in a statement at the time.
Santos Canales, a 55-year-old immigration activist and construction worker, said he remembered seeing Ms. Moreno on TV shortly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Like many immigrants in New Orleans, he had moved there from Honduras to help rebuild.
Roughly 20 years later, he saw her election victory on TV. Now, he is curious how Ms. Moreno will meet the moment.
“We hope that she doesn’t simply boast her last name and her belonging to our community,” Mr. Canales said in Spanish. “We hope that she simply makes a real commitment, sits down at the table and listens.”
Eduardo Medina is a Times reporter covering the South. An Alabama native, he is now based in Durham, N.C.
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