Reactions to the Border Patrol operation in North Carolina have varied widely since agents zeroed in on Charlotte last week and briefly spread out to Raleigh and Durham.
Ami-Luise Badger, an independent who leans Democrat, stood with several other protesters outside a Home Depot in Charlotte, N.C., on Wednesday to make her disdain known for the federal agents who had arrested people there earlier in the week. “They’re inhumane,” she said of the agents.
A few days later, Juanrique Hall, a Republican and former candidate for the local school board, was walking around the immigrant enclave of East Charlotte feeling grateful for the Border Patrol. It didn’t matter to him if someone had been in the country illegally for “10 years or 10 minutes,” he said, because they had broken the law.
And inside a small apartment complex, an Ecuadorean man, who asked to not be named because of his undocumented status, was hiding, and weeping over his two nephews in their 20s, who he said had been arrested by federal agents.
Together they underscore North Carolina’s unique position as the first swing state to be targeted by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration. Republicans have largely viewed the agents’ presence as necessary to curb crime. Democrats have mostly disagreed, saying they have provoked chaos and fear. But the operation has also prompted reflection from residents across the political spectrum, who wonder whether the aggressive tactics, which have led to a few hundred arrests, were worth it.
It remains to be seen whether the operation might sway voters in next year’s elections, especially independents, who play an outsize role in the state. North Carolina’s population has grown in recent years, with many people arriving from blue states in the Northeast. But it is also the most rural of all the swing states, with a number of conservative counties that have growing pockets of immigrants who work in agricultural jobs.
Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, is Democratic, but has broken the party’s heart in past elections with its low voter turnout.
Memories of the operation could prove important next year, when North Carolina will decide one of the most closely contested Senate races, between former Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and Michael Whatley, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
In statements, both men have said that devoting resources to deporting violent criminals is good. But they disagree on the degree to which the Border Patrol is effectively doing that.
Americans’ approval of Mr. Trump’s “handling of immigration” stands at about 45 percent, according to a New York Times review of recent polls of the general public, which primarily measure attitudes among U.S.-born citizens but include representative shares of immigrants.
But when polls mention “border security,” approval tends to be higher. In a Marquette Law School poll taken this month, more than half of Americans — 54 percent — said they approved of Mr. Trump’s handling of “border security”
Chris Cooper, a political science professor at Western Carolina University, said the Border Patrol’s presence in North Carolina could be politically beneficial to Republicans because if the party “is going to succeed on immigration, one thing they need to do is convince Americans that every state is a border state.”
“The administration wants to demonstrate that cities in general, which lean left, are a problem, and making us less safe in their depiction,” Mr. Cooper said. “It almost doesn’t matter whether it’s a blue state or a purple state or a red state.”
The operation in Charlotte has stoked anger in some unexpected corners. At a country club, witnesses said federal agents had chased a Hispanic employee with legal permission to work into a green space and briefly detained him. Many club members were not pleased.
“I feel like they’ve intentionally come in with this desire for shock and awe,” said Rusty Price, a conservative-leaning pastor and chief executive of Camino, a faith-based nonprofit in Charlotte that provides health and social services to Latinos. “Who will this help, what they’ve just done? Because it hasn’t helped Charlotte.”
Others see value in the crackdown. Tommy Hicks, who works at a manufacturing plant in the rural town of Burlington, N.C., about 110 miles northeast of Charlotte, said he had voted as a Democrat all his life, until President Trump entered the political scene. He believes the president is “doing the best he can” to curb the number of people who are here illegally, a problem he said had spun out of control under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. (The number of border crossings declined toward the end of his presidency.)
“I think this is the necessary evil to get to, following through on what he wants to do for America,” Mr. Hicks, 54, said of Mr. Trump, noting that it was easy to portray agents as “evil,” when really they were “just trying to make a living.”
But Paul Lewis, a 64-year-old manufacturing technician also from Burlington who voted for Mr. Trump twice, said he was surprised to see the Border Patrol “spend the energy and resources to be here.”
“We’re not near a border, right?” Mr. Lewis said. “I think it’s a bit much. If they’re out for a warrant for a criminal who’s illegal, sure, go after them.”
But just pulling random people off the street “because they’re Hispanic,” he added, “seems a little excessive.”
Robbie Winters, a 37-year-old political independent from Gibsonville, N.C., sighed as his colleagues spoke. His wife, a teacher, is from Colombia. Some of her students have not showed up for school in recent days, he said, and the couple believe it was because of the operation.
“It’s targeting Hispanic people,” he said. “It’s dividing us, like we need to be any more divided as a country already.”
It is unclear if the operation is over with. Local officials in Charlotte said as much on Thursday, but hours later a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was neither over nor “ending anytime soon.”
More than 370 people have been arrested in Charlotte, of which at least 44 have criminal records, according to federal officials. The full scope of their crimes remains unclear. Gregory Bovino, a senior Border Patrol official and native North Carolinian who has led the operation in Charlotte, as well as those in Chicago and Los Angeles, has posted about a handful of the “worst of the worst” immigrants on social media.
But immigration lawyers say several of those with criminal records had low-level offenses, and that the hundreds of others who were arrested were simply trying to work.
Two men were charged in separate incidents in Charlotte and accused of using their vehicles to assault, resist or impede the Border Patrol agents. Many residents have yelled profanities at them, and honked their horns at agents when their unmarked vehicles are spotted.
Republican officials in the state have argued that President Trump’s victory has given them a mandate for tough immigration enforcement. Some have said that the images of empty construction sites this week, where undocumented immigrants often work, prove that American jobs are being taken by migrants.
But many supporters of immigrants and Latinos say the tone has increasingly felt racist, especially by right-wing accounts online. One posted an A.I.-generated video on X of county leaders gleefully wearing sombreros. Earlier this week, a supporter of Mr. Bovino’s thanked him for detaining an immigrant by using an offensive pun for a Hispanic person.
“We had a record day today!” Mr. Bovino replied.
As bright as the spotlight has been in Charlotte, Democratic leaders in the state have been less confrontational than their counterparts in Illinois and California. Gov. Josh Stein and Charlotte’s mayor, Vi Lyles, both Democrats, released statements or videos expressing concern over the agents’ actions, accusing them of racially profiling random people. But several community leaders said the pushback in Charlotte, where the banking industry looms large, had not been forceful enough.
Even so, Ms. Badger, dressed up as the Statue of Liberty, showed up to Wednesday’s protest at the Home Depot to make her voice heard.
Toward the end, a man in a maroon vehicle decided he would share his thoughts, too. He drove by the protesters and shouted an expletive at them. Then he raised his middle finger.
Emily Cataneo contributed reporting.
Eduardo Medina is a Times reporter covering the South. An Alabama native, he is now based in Durham, N.C.
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