A top border patrol commander touted dozens of arrests in North Carolina’s largest city on Sunday as Charlotte residents reported a surge of encounters with federal immigration agents near churches and apartment complexes.
The Trump administration has made the Democratic-led city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement crackdown it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and the fact that crime rates in the city are steadily declining.
Some businesses in Charlotte chose to stay closed at the weekend and many areas that would often be bustling on a Saturday afternoon were quiet as people stayed home in fear of anti-immigration raids and sweeps.
Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents on a similar operation in Chicago, took to social media to document some of the arrests, a total that he said now stands at 81. He added that many of those taken into custody had “significant criminal and immigration history” and that the mass arrests were accomplished in “about 5 hours”.
He posted pictures of people the Trump administration commonly dubs “criminal illegal aliens” as a damning characterization for people living in the US without legal permission who have alleged criminal records. That included one of a man with an alleged history of drunk driving convictions.
“We arrested him, taking him off the streets of Charlotte so he can’t continue to ignore our laws and drive intoxicated on the same roads you and your loved ones are on,” Bovino wrote on X.
The latest effort by federal law enforcement has been labeled “Operation Charlotte’s Web” as a play on the title of the children’s book but conjuring an image of people caught in a trap.
In response to the crackdown, activists were seen in videos posted to social media handing out whistles to community members for them to alert their neighbors to the presence of ICE and federal agents.
Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles, board of county commissioners chair Mark Jerrell, and Charlotte-Mecklenburg board of education chair Stephanie Sneed released a joint statement following news of the targeted efforts.
“Our organizations believe that our diversity makes us stronger,” the statement reads. “The expected … operations are causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty in our community as recent operations in other cities have resulted in people without criminal records being detained and violent protests being the result of unwarranted actions.”
At Camino, a nonprofit group that offers services to Latino communities, some said they were too afraid to leave their homes to attend school, medical appointments or work. A dental clinic the group runs had nine cancellations on Friday, spokesperson Paola Garcia said.
“Latinos love this country. They came here to escape socialism and communism, and they’re hard workers and people of faith,” Garcia said. “They love their family, and it’s just so sad to see that this community now has this target on their back.”
Nikki Marín Baena, co-director of Siembra NC, an immigrant advocacy group, called it a “shameful day for the North Carolina Republican Party, who hailed the arrival of so-called law enforcement officers carrying out terrorist operations, and echoed Greg Bovino’s talking points about ‘going after criminals’” in a statement to the New York Times.
The group added that, prior to Saturday, the biggest number of immigrant arrests in a single day in North Carolina was 30 people back in June.
Recent operations led by Bovino in Chicago and Los Angeles triggered a flurry of lawsuits and investigations over questions about use of force, including wide deployment of chemical agents against protesters.
Democratic party leaders in both cities said that agents’ presence inflamed community tensions and actually led to violence.
Bovino and other Trump administration officials have called the use of force appropriate, citing a growing threats on agents’ lives.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees CBP, did not respond to inquiries about the Charlotte arrests. Bovino’s spokesman did not return a request for comment on Sunday.
DHS has not offered many details about who it has been arresting. For instance in Chicago, the agency only provided names and details on a handful of its more than 3,000 arrests in the metro region from September to last week.
By Sunday, reports of CBP activity in Charlotte were “overwhelming” and difficult to quantify, Greg Asciutto, executive director of the community development group CharlotteEast, said in an email.
“The past two hours we’ve received countless reports of CBP activity at churches, apartment complexes and a hardware store,” he said.
City council member-elect JD Mazuera Arias said targeting houses of worship was “just awful”.
“These are sanctuaries for people who are looking for hope and faith in dark times like these and who no longer can feel safe because of the gross violation of people’s right to worship,” he said.
Associated Press contributed reporting
