HOUMA -- The FBI temporarily shut down and raided a handful of local convenience stores Thursday, leading Arab store owners to decry the search-and-seizure operations as racial profiling.

Sabree Hill / Houma Courier

Terrebonne Narcotics Task Force agents Steven Bergeron (foreground) and Shane Fletcher carry items confiscated by the FBI out of Smoke Plus in the 5500 block of West Main Street in Houma. FBI officials have not said what they confiscated or why they were at several Terrebonne stores Thursday.

The government agents targeted clothing and smoking materials during their searches, store owners said, but authorities did not reveal the reasons for the searches or whether any arrests were made by late Thursday afternoon.

Agents on the scene referred questions to the FBI field office in New Orleans, where FBI Agent John Rook said Thursday’s raids were part of a statewide sweep. Because they are based on sealed federal indictments, however, Rook said he could not discuss anything about them.

The indictments could be opened sometime today, Rook said, but had not been as of 9 a.m.

Assisting in the raids were agents from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Terrebonne Narcotics Task Force. A customs spokesman said that because his agency was only assisting the FBI, he could not answer any questions about the operation. Likewise, the local narcotics agents also said they had only been asked to assist and were not given any information about the operation.

Among the stores raided were Smoke Plus, at the corner of the Del Ray Bridge and West Main Street; the Amigo Mini-Mart, just on the west side of the Houma Tunnel; and NY Style and Beauty, just across the street. Other Terrebonne locations may have been raided as well, store owners said, but officials have not released a list of sites they searched.

Outside the beauty-supply shop sat a large U-Haul truck loaded with empty, flat cardboard boxes that agents carried one-by-one into the store. At the Mini Mart, agents stood in the doorway, blocking the view of the interior as a small crowd of neighborhood residents watched from across the street.

At the Smoke Plus gas station on West Main, agents carried several cardboard boxes with multicolored packages peeking over the top to waiting police cars. A constant flow of traffic stopped at the store, but the customers were all turned away by agents or a clerk.

"They didn’t tell me anything," said Shirley Van Buren, who tried to stop for gas during the raid. "They just said they were closed."

'AN INSULT’

Both the Mini Mart and Smoke Plus are owned or operated by people of Arab descent, who said they were being unfairly targeted and mistreated by the agents.

"They’re raiding all the Arabic stores," said Jamil Ahmed, a young man of Yemeni descent who said his father owned the Mini Mart on Tunnel Drive. "It’s a racial thing, I think."

Following the search of the Mini Mart, Ahmed said his father was taken to New Orleans for questioning by the FBI. The agents confiscated all his water pipes for Turkish tobacco, accusing the store owners of selling pipes for smoking crack cocaine, Ahmed said.

"They just started searching the place. They tore the place apart," Ahmed said of the agents. "It was wrong what they did."

Across town at Smoke Plus, owner Mohsen Saleh said the agents who searched his store from around 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. went through his cigarette stock, then took all the clothing and shoes he had for sale, telling him it was "fake."

"I don’t know which one is fake and which one is right," Saleh said.

Further, the agents told him to open his safe and confiscated approximately $2,600 in cash inside, Saleh said. The loss of the money and merchandise, however, was not what made him so upset.

"It’s because they insulted me," Saleh said.

The FBI spokesman in New Orleans said he could not respond to the store owners’ complaints until the indictments are unsealed.

Around 2 p.m. Thursday, when only one federal agent remained in the Mini Mart, Ahmed tried to display the emptied glass cases in his store to a visitor. The agent immediately walked to the front of the store and ordered the visitors out, though Ahmed protested that he had invited them in.

"You don’t understand," the agent told Ahmed. "This place is mine right now."