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 he said had reached more than 80. 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.
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.”
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.
The Associated Press contributed reporting
