After a surge in Border Patrol activity in North Carolina's largest city over the weekend, including dozens of arrests, Gov. Josh Stein said the effort is “stoking fear," not making Charlotte safer.
The Trump administration has made the Democratic city of about 950,000 people its latest focus for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and declining crime rates. Charlotte residents reported encounters with federal immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores.
“We’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks,” Stein said in a video statement late Sunday. “This is not making us safer. It’s stoking fear and dividing our community.”
Stein acknowledged that it was a stressful time, but he called on residents to stay peaceful. If people see something wrong, he said they should record it and report it to local law enforcement.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Customs and Border Protection agency, has said it is focusing on North Carolina because of so-called sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local authorities and immigration agents.
Several county jails hold arrested immigrants and honor detainers, which allow jails to turn detainees over to immigration officers. But Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, does not. Also, the city’s police department does not help with immigration enforcement. DHS alleged that about 1,400 detainers across North Carolina had not been honored, putting the public at risk.
Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in a similar effort in Chicago, documented some of the more than 80 arrests he said agents had made in social media posts on Sunday. He posted pictures of people the Trump administration commonly dubs “criminal illegal aliens,” meaning people living in the U.S. without legal permission who allegedly have criminal records. That included one of a man accused of having a history of drunk driving convictions.
The activity has prompted fear and questions, including where detainees would be held, how long the operation would last and whether the tactics used in North Carolina would be similar to those that were criticized elsewhere as aggressive and racist.
However, some welcomed the effort, including Mecklenburg County Republican Party Chairman Kyle Kirby, who said in a post Saturday that the county GOP “stands with the rule of law — and with every Charlottean’s safety first.”
Bovino's operations in Chicago and Los Angeles triggered lawsuits over the use of force, including widespread deployment of chemical agents. Democratic leaders in both cities accused agents of inflaming community tensions. Federal agents fatally shot one suburban Chicago man during a traffic stop.
Bovino, head of a Border Patrol sector in El Centro, California, and other Trump administration officials have called their tactics appropriate for growing threats on agents.
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Tareen and Dale reported from Chicago. Witte reported from Annapolis, Maryland.
