Alison Poort, chief of staff for the New Orleans city council member Lesli Harris, visited the warehouse three days before state police began sending unhoused people there.
Concerns persist among unhoused people and their advocates about the warehouse arrangement – which is costing taxpayers more than $17m – as the eyes of the world turn to New Orleans, hosting the NFL’s Super Bowl on 9 February and Mardi Gras festivities culminating on 4 March.
Furthermore, the warehouse may be a harbinger of what’s to come nationally as the second Donald Trump presidency’s new housing secretary has refused to rule out government-run detention camps for unhoused people.
Other unhoused people, including one woman still wearing a hospital bracelet, had been forced to quickly abandon all their possessions as officers descended and began to rip apart their tents with knives and a Caterpillar front-end loader, according to witnesses.
In the affidavit, Christopher Aylwen, who had been unhoused for nine months, said he had been approached by law enforcement officers that morning and told that a bus was waiting to take him to a new facility.
