Opinion: Looking closer to Home

Louisiana House Majority Leader Michael Echols has built part of his political brand on fear. In his telling, undocumented immigrants are a threat – dangerous, criminal, a problem to be solved. It’s a reliable applause line. It moves voters. And it costs him nothing to say. In fact, I was present for a speech he gave recently on April 6th, 2026. He ranted for a few minutes about the danger of undocumented immigrants. It rocked my memory on a previous encounter.

I visited a construction site connected to Echols’ business interests. I wanted to hear from the people doing the work – what the job was like, what they thought of the man signing the checks. What I got instead was a moment I haven’t been able to shake.
A worker there declined to speak on the record. The reason he gave wasn’t about workplace loyalty or legal caution in the way you might expect. He told me he was undocumented. He was afraid that talking to a reporter – even briefly – could lead to his deportation.
I’m not going to describe him further than that. He didn’t ask to be part of this story. But he is part of it, whether either of us wanted that.
Because here is the thing about Michael Echols: he goes to Baton Rouge and uses people who look like that worker as political props. He tells his constituents they should be afraid of them. He positions himself as the wall standing between Louisiana families and some imagined invasion.
And then, if the people working jobs connected to his business interests are any indication, he may be perfectly comfortable with the labor those same people provide – as long as they stay quiet and stay useful.
That is not a values system. That is a transaction.
There is a word for politicians who demonize a group publicly while quietly depending on them privately. The polite version is hypocrite. The accurate version is worse.
Echols called my prior reporting a “hit piece.” He blocked me from his official campaign Facebook page rather than answer questions – a move that legal scholars have noted raises serious First Amendment concerns when done by elected officials conducting public business online. He has not demonstrated any interest in accountability, only in controlling the narrative.
But the narrative has a way of finding you anyway. Sometimes it’s standing at a job site, too afraid to give you its name.