BATON ROUGE - Over $1 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will now go towards renovating office space at the Baton Rouge Police Department headquarters, to house the Homeland Security Investigations Task Force.

But members of the community, like Marcela Hernandez, say they are concerned about how this may affect the immigrant and refugee community.

"This adds another layer of distrust to the system, and this will only continue creating ways for our community not to be well represented because they are hiding," Hernandez said.

Some are pointing to the fact that Homeland Security Investigations falls under the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement..

"Will ICE have access to this task force and this building specifically?" one community member said.

Baton Rouge Police Chief T.J. Morse says the task force will target violent crimes and gang activity throughout the city, not immigration enforcement or border patrol.

"I get the anx, I get the fear, the fear is real. I can only say a million times enough, this is not that. This money that was approved tonight is going to build out office space, so that we can have task forces to go against violent gun, gang, crime inside of Baton Rouge," Morse said.

Morse says the task force will consist of Homeland Security Investigators, along with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, FBI, and the Marshals office, which he says they currently have officers assigned to task forces with those agencies.

"What this does is put them all under one roof, under the same, sitting next to each other in a desk where they can look at each other, and they're not working in separate silos, and so they can better tackle the violent crime in the city of Baton Rouge and then outside as well," Morse said.