A top border patrol commander touted dozens of arrests in North Carolina’s largest city on Sunday as Charlotte residents reported a surge of encounters with federal immigration agents near churches and apartment complexes.
The Trump administration has made the Democratic-led city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement crackdown it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and the fact that crime rates in the city are steadily declining.
Some businesses in Charlotte chose to stay closed at the weekend and many areas that would often be bustling on a Saturday afternoon were quiet as people stayed home in fear of anti-immigration raids and sweeps.
Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents on a similar operation in Chicago, took to social media to document some of the arrests, a total that he said now stands at 81. He added that many of those taken into custody had “significant criminal and immigration history” and that the mass arrests were accomplished in “about 5 hours”.