Dozens arrested in NC as part of Operation Charlottes Web after Trump admin immigration crackdown: Border Patrol official
A top Border Patrol commander touted dozens of arrests in North Carolina’s largest city on Sunday as Charlotte residents reported encounters with federal immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores.The Trump administration has made the Democratic city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and downtrending crime rates.Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of US Customs and Border Protection agents in a similar effort in Chicago, took to X to document a few of the more than 80 arrests he said agents had made.He also posted a highly edited video of uniformed CBP officers handcuffing people.“From border towns to the Queen City, our agents go where the mission calls,” he posted on X, referring to Charlotte.The effort was dubbed “Operation Charlotte’s Web” as a play on the title of a famous children’s book that isn’t about North Carolina.Some welcomed the intervention, including Mecklenburg County Republican Party Chairman Kyle Kirby, who said in a post Saturday that the county GOP “stands with the rule of law — and with every Charlottean’s safety first.”The flurry of activity prompted fear and questions, including where detainees would be held, how long the operation would last and what agents’ tactics — criticized elsewhere as aggressive and racist — would look like in North Carolina.
On Saturday, at least one US citizen said he was thrown to the ground and briefly detained.At Camino, a nonprofit group that offers services to Latino communities, some said they were too afraid to leave their homes to attend school, medical appointments or work.A dental clinic the group runs had nine cancellations on Friday, spokesperson Paola Garcia said.“Latinos love this country.
They came here to escape socialism and communism, and they’re hard workers and people of faith,” Garcia said.“They love their fa...