The city of Charlotte, North Carolina, has become the latest Democratic-run city to be targeted by President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration offensive.
Federal law enforcement agents were spotted making arrests across the city Saturday as the Department of Homeland Security confirmed the surge of officers for what the administration is calling Operation Charlotte’s Web.
“We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed,” Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
The Trump administration’s mass deportation operations have seen a boost in Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection officers into major Democratic-led cities with large immigrant populations in recent months, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland.
Charlotte is a racially diverse city of more than 900,000 residents, including more than 150,000 who are foreign-born, according to local officials.
The administration’s latest deployment creates “unnecessary fear and uncertainty,” according to a statement signed by Charlotte’s Democratic Mayor Vi Lyles, County Commissioner Mark Jerrell and Stephanie Sneed of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg education board.
“We want people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to know we stand with all residents who simply want to go about their lives,” they added.
The administration did not publicly announce plans for the latest blitz, nut Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden confirmed earlier this week that two federal officials had told him that Border Patrol agents would be arriving soon.
Paola Garcia, a spokesperson with Camino — a bilingual nonprofit serving families in Charlotte — said she and her colleagues have observed an increase in Border Patrol and ICE agents pulling people over since Friday.
“Basically what we're seeing is that there have been lots of people being pulled over,” Garcia said. “I even saw a few people being pulled over on the way to work yesterday, and then just from community members seeing an increase in ICE and border patrol agents in the city of Charlotte.”
Willy Aceituno, a Honduran-born U.S. citizen, was on his way to work when he saw Border Patrol agents chasing people.
“I saw a lot of Latinos running. I wondered why they were running. The thing is, there were a lot of Border Patrol agents chasing them,” he said.
Aceituno, a 46-year-old Charlotte resident, said he himself was stopped — twice — by Border Patrol agents. On the second encounter, they forced him out of his vehicle after breaking the car window and threw him to the ground.
“I told them, 'I'm an American citizen,” he told The Associated Press. “They wanted to know where I was born, or they didn't believe I was an American citizen.”
He was allowed to go free after showing documents that proved his citizenship.
North Carolina Rep. Alma S. Adams said she was “extremely concerned” about the deployment of federal agents to Charlotte two days prior.
“Charlotte’s immigrant community is a proud part of the Queen City, and I will not stand by and watch my constituents be intimidated or harassed,” Adams said.
Gregory Bovino, the top Border Patrol official overseeing the Trump administration’s boots-on-the-ground operations, responded to Adams in a post on X.
“Immigrants rest assured, we have your back like we did in Chicago and Los Angeles,” Bovino said. “Rep. Adams, perhaps you [and] Gov. STEIN should learn the difference between an illegal alien [and] an immigrant.”
Bovino and officers under his command in Chicago — where agents were filmed tackling protesters and filling neighborhoods with tear gas — faced a federal lawsuit from protesters, press groups and faith leaders accusing agents of indiscriminately firing riot weapons into crowds and at close range as volatile scenes emerged from protests against immigration raids.
Officials in California , Illinois and Oregon have accused the federal government of deliberately trying to incite violence to justify law enforcement crackdowns and military deployments.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
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