Border patrol deployments triggered a wave of arrests in Charlotte on Saturday, with federal agents moving into multiple locations.“We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.Local officials including Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles criticised the operation, saying it “are causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty.” The statement, also signed by County Commissioner Mark Jerrell and Stephanie Sneed of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg education board, added, “We want people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to know we stand with all residents who simply want to go about their lives.”Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden confirmed earlier this week that two federal officials had told him Customs agents would be arriving soon. Paola Garcia, a spokesperson with Camino — a bilingual nonprofit serving families in Charlotte — said she and her colleagues had observed an increase in Border Patrol and ICE agents pulling people over since Friday. “Basically what we’re seeing is that there have been lots of people being pulled over,” Garcia said. “I even saw a few people being pulled over on the way to work yesterday, and then just from community members seeing an increase in ICE and border patrol agents in the city of Charlotte.”Willy Aceituno, a Honduran-born US citizen, was on his way to work when he saw agents chasing people. “I saw a lot of Latinos running. I wondered why they were running. The thing is, there were a lot of Border Patrol agents chasing them,” he said. Aceituno, a 46-year-old Charlotte resident, said he was stopped twice by Border Patrol agents. On the second encounter, they forced him out of his vehicle after breaking the car window and threw him to the ground. “I told them, ‘I’m an American citizen,’” he told The Associated Press. “They wanted to know where I was born, or they didn’t believe I was an American citizen.” He was finally allowed to go free after showing documents that proved his citizenship.Charlotte is a racially diverse city of more than 900,000 residents, including more than 150,000 who are foreign-born, according to local officials.Local organisations responded by holding trainings to inform immigrants of their rights and considering peaceful protests. President Donald Trump’s administration has defended federal enforcement operations in cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago as necessary for fighting crime and enforcing immigration laws.Governor Josh Stein, a Democrat with a Republican-majority legislature, said on Friday that the “vast majority” of those detained in these operations had no criminal convictions, and some were American citizens. He urged people to record any “inappropriate behaviour” they saw and notify local law enforcement about it.The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department had emphasised ahead of time that it was not involved in federal immigration enforcement.
