As U.S. homelessness rates reach record highs, President Donald Trump has pledged to ban street camping, relocate unhoused people to privately-managed “tent cities,” and arrest anyone caught violating the new laws. But while Trump’s threats certainly sound draconian, they’re not exactly novel. In recent years, several states have organized increasingly harsh homeless sweeps—perhaps most typified by Louisiana, where the governor recently oversaw a possible model for the sort of mass relocation that Trump has promised.

Federal officials seem to be taking note. According to a local official who spoke to The Appeal, in early February, Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem quietly visited a warehouse where Gov. Jeff Landry had relocated nearly 200 homeless people, sometimes under threat of arrest. And in March, Trump appointed Madison Sheahan, a state official whose agency enforced Landry’s crackdown, to become deputy director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not respond to a request for comment.

Sheahan, who is 28, was appointed secretary of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF) by Landry in 2023, though she had no background in conservation or ecology. She previously worked on Noem’s campaign for South Dakota governor and was executive director of the Republican Party there, where she worked on banning trans athletes from college sports. Otherwise, her qualifications are questionable: besides issuing rules for sawfish harvesting and letting military veterans hunt bears, Sheahan’s most relevant experience over the last year seems to be lending her officers to Landry to round up homeless residents.