Hondurans in New Orleans

As of 2014, the New Orleans metropolitan area has the largest Honduran American community in the United States.

[3] Prior to Hurricane Katrina, there were over 100,000 Hondurans, making up 10% of the total population, in the New Orleans area.

In the 1960s the first large wave of Hondurans, many of whom moved to the centrally-located Garden District, came to New Orleans to escape late 1950s floods, fruit company strikes, and military coups which resulted in the instability of Honduras's economy and political system.

[5] Within a year of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, over 10,000 Hondurans and Mexicans moved to New Orleans to do work rebuilding the city.

At the time the George W. Bush administration suspended some labor laws on a temporary basis, and several federal contractors aired Spanish-language television advertisements promising work to the illegal immigrants without the possibility of deportation.