A top Border Patrol commander touted dozens of arrests in North Carolina’s largest city on Sunday as Charlotte residents reported encounters with federal immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores.
The Trump administration has made the Democratic city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and down trending crime rates.
Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on a similar effort in Chicago, took to social media to document a few of the more than 80 arrests he said agents had made. He posted pictures of people the Trump administration commonly dubs “criminal illegal aliens,” for people living in the U.S. 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 effort was dubbed “Operation Charlotte’s Web” as a play on the title of a famous children’s book that isn’t about North Carolina.
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But the flurry of activity immediately prompted fears and questions, including where detainees would be held, how long the operation would last and what agents’ tactics — criticized elsewhere as aggressive and racist — would look like in North Carolina. On Saturday, at least one U.S. citizen said he was thrown to the ground and briefly detained.
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.”
Bovino’s operations in Chicago and Los Angeles triggered a flurry of lawsuits over the use of force, including wide deployment of chemical agents. Democratic leaders in both places 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.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, did not respond to inquiries about the Charlotte arrests. Bovino’s spokesman did not return a request for comment Sunday.
Elsewhere, DHS has not offered many details about its arrests. In the Chicago area, 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. U.S. citizens were detained during several operations. Dozens of protesters were also arrested.
By Sunday, reports of CBP activity around Charlotte were “overwhelming” and difficult to quantify, Greg Asciutto, executive director of the community development group CharlotteEast, said in a morning 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 federal agents appeared to be focused on churches and apartment buildings.
“Houses of worship. I mean, that’s just awful,” he said. “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.”
DHS said it was focusing on North Carolina because of so-called sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local authorities and immigration agents.
Several county jails house immigrant arrestees and honor detainers, which allow jails to hold detainees for immigration officers to pick them up. But Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, 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.
“We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed,” Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
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Tareen and Dale reported from Chicago. Witte reported from Annapolis, Maryland.
