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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.”

We’ve Spent a Year Fighting a Federal Assault on Memphis. Your City May Be Next.

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........

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