Border Patrol’s Chaotic Week in North Carolina

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Last week, Leonardo Williams, the mayor of Durham, North Carolina, received a call from the office of Governor Josh Stein. Stein’s office had heard that the Trump administration was going to launch an immigration-enforcement operation in Charlotte and possibly in Raleigh, but it didn’t have much more information. Over the weekend, Customs and Border Protection agents swarmed Charlotte, ultimately arresting about 370 people.

But Williams didn’t hear anything about operations in Durham until Tuesday morning. He was in Washington, D.C., for meetings when someone sent him a video of what were apparently CBP officers in tactical gear and masks arresting three men behind a strip mall. He wasn’t the only one with no idea what was happening. “When I call my sheriff and my police chief and the governor’s office and I say, ‘What is going on?’ they say, ‘Mayor, we are trying to find out,’” he told me on Wednesday afternoon.

In Durham, where I live, sightings of apparent CBP agents around Durham continued throughout Tuesday. Local officials said that four or five people were arrested by these agents, but the federal government has not released the names of those arrested or what charges they face. It hasn’t even made an official statement on the operation in Durham, and the Department of Homeland Security did not reply to my questions about the arrests or why CBP had targeted Durham.

Keeping local officials in the dark seems to be part of the Trump administration’s plan. Local leaders in Chicago and Portland, Oregon, have also said that the federal government did not inform them of its plans ahead of actions this summer and fall. Like them, the North Carolina governor and the mayors of Charlotte, Durham, and Raleigh are all Democrats. In addition, all three cities are in counties whose sheriffs declined to participate in 287(g) programs, in which county jails voluntarily cooperate with ICE even when it doesn’t have warrants. (Earlier this year, the state legislature passed a law requiring cooperation.)

Garry McFadden, the sheriff of Charlotte’s Mecklenburg County, told NPR last weekend that he believed that the administration’s actions there were payback. “When people say, ‘Why Charlotte?’ Well, because when we took 287(g) off the table, we were very vocal about protecting our citizens and residents here and stood at the door each time immigration came in,” he said. But even U.S. Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican, voiced concern yesterday, demanding a “definitive list of people who were detained, how long they were detained, whether or not they were released,” and other information.

The Department of Homeland Security has said that arrests in previous operations targeted serious criminals accused of felonies, but because federal officials aren’t providing any meaningful information, there is no way for local officials—or members of the public—to assess whether these actions are part of lawful immigration enforcement or not.

The combination of little reliable information and widespread fear produced a vacuum in Durham. Hundreds of ordinary residents, eager to do something to resist raids but without clear ideas about how or where, organized themselves via group chats, where rumors flew quickly—some true, some false, some simply impossible to verify. Trying to understand things myself, I joined a Signal group where residents were sharing reports and discussing possible organizing responses. I noticed that several local elected officials were active in the group.

Following a tip there about possible CBP activity at an apartment complex, I drove north from my house along a major thoroughfare studded with Latin American businesses carrying names such as Tenochtitlan, Pahuatlán, and Michoacan. My favorite taqueria was dark and closed; the gates around the parking lot at the normally bustling Latin grocery were locked. I received a text in Spanish from another supermarket, which had been the site of an ICE-raid hoax in January, saying that “due to the current situation,” it would accept orders on WhatsApp and provide free delivery. Many students stayed home from Durham public schools, which are roughly 35 percent Latino. The school district reported that one-fifth of students were absent on Tuesday.

“I have lived in Durham all my life, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Bertha Bradley, an activist known locally as Mama Cookie, said at a press conference of union leaders and clergy members on Wednesday morning. “People scared to leave their home. They’re scared to take the children to school.”

When I got to the apartment complex, people on the scene said they’d seen a suspicious-looking black SUV enter, driven by a man whom no residents recognized. As we stood around, a car with three Hispanic men inside drove up and rolled down its window. Someone explained the situation, and the eyes of the man in the passenger seat grew big. He hurriedly told the driver to turn around and leave. I never did find out whether a federal agent was present. (When I called the apartment office, a manager said no.) But this confusion seemed to capture the frenzied feeling around the city. Did the men in the car have a close encounter, or were they scared away by a mere rumor?

For activists, whether veteran organizers or people who had self-deployed, getting reliable information was both important and impossible. No better source than the rumor mill existed—local media couldn’t possibly track down reports and confirm them quickly enough—and social media allowed hearsay to spread widely, for better or worse.

Every white van or black SUV with tinted windows set off alarm bells. As I crisscrossed the city, following new tips and recognizing some of the same faces from previous stops, I felt like I was chasing ghosts. CBP seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, creating a sense of omnipresent menace that was presumably just what the agents wanted.

Local officials also suggested, as they have in other locations where ICE or CBP has been active, that the Trump administration is attempting to provoke confrontations, either with officials or with ordinary people. “We follow the law. We remain peaceful. We do not allow ourselves to be provoked. We stand with our neighbors,” Governor Stein said in a statement last week. “If you see any inappropriate behavior, use your phones to record and notify local law enforcement, who will continue to keep our communities safe long after these federal agents leave.” (That did provoke the CBP commander Gregory Bovino, who was leading the Charlotte operation and who angrily posted on X, “You need to check yourself.”) Williams told me that local officials were “trying not to antagonize and poke the bear and give them what they want, which is a public government-on-government fight” and trying to reassure residents at the same time.

Meanwhile, the residents were taking things into their own hands. When I dropped my children off at school on Wednesday morning, some 30 people were standing outside, a few with whistles to alert anyone if CBP arrived and others waving anti-ICE signs. But the Signal chat was no longer lighting up with spottings. That morning, ABC News reported that CBP was leaving the area and heading back to Charlotte, and yesterday, officials in Charlotte said CBP had informed them that they were leaving, though DHS denied that the operation was over.

“I think the best way to describe it is: They came in, they made a splash, they terrorized, and they left,” Williams said. But even the agents’ apparent departure was marked by mixed messaging and confusion. All Durham officials and residents can do is wait and see if it’s really over.

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