The Department of Homeland Security has begun law enforcement operations in Charlotte, federal officials said Saturday, the latest Democratic-run city to brace for the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
“We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a DHS spokesperson, in an email. “There have been too many victims of criminal illegal aliens, and President Trump and Secretary Noem will step up to protect Americans when sanctuary politicians won’t.”
Garry McFadden, sheriff of Mecklenburg County, where Charlotte is located, said earlier this week that federal officials had confirmed a plan for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to begin operations as early as Saturday. McFadden said his office had not been asked by federal authorities to assist.
Charlotte, led by Mayor Vi Lyles (D), was thrust into the national spotlight in August when a young woman riding a public train was fatally stabbed, allegedly by a 34-year-old homeless man with a history of severe mental illness. President Donald Trump and other Republican officials used the attack to argue that Democrats needed to tighten the grip on their cities, saying that the suspect would have been in prison if not for the city’s left-leaning policies.
Lyles, who was reelected earlier this month, said in a statement Saturday morning that recent DHS operations involving Border Patrol agents were causing “unnecessary fear and uncertainty” in the community, and also encouraged the city to remain peaceful.
“Let us all — no matter our political allegiance — stand together for all hard working and law-abiding families,” she and other city and county leaders wrote in the statement.
Willy Aceituno, a 46-year-old U.S. citizen born in Honduras, told the Associated Press that he was stopped twice by Border Patrol agents. The second time, the agents broke his car windows, forced him out of his car and threw him to the ground.
“They wanted to know where I was born, or they didn’t believe I was an American citizen,” he told the AP.
Aceituno said he was forcibly taken into a Border Patrol car, but was released after showing documents that proved his citizenship. Earlier, he had seen Border Patrol agents chase people on his way to work.
The state’s Democratic governor, Josh Stein, said Friday that the vast majority of people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol agents across the country have no criminal convictions, and urged North Carolinians on Friday to remain peaceful and to stand with their neighbors.
“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,” he said in a statement. “That’s the North Carolina way.”
As the Trump administration continues its nationwide mass deportation campaign, ICE agents have been accused of abusive behavior in the cities in which they’ve been deployed.
A federal judge said Thursday that immigration officers have unnecessarily terrorized local residents, and added that the Department of Justice’s defense for their actions was “simply not credible.” Earlier this week, a father alleged that he, his 1-year-old daughter and other family members were pepper-sprayed by ICE agents as they were grocery shopping at Chicago suburb last week, an allegation ICE has denied.
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