‘I lose my liberty in that moment’: Charlotte shuts down as citizens and noncitizens alike face ICE arrests

On Central Avenue in Charlotte, North Carolina, Manolo’s Bakery has become a focal point for resistance to the upscaled immigration raids since border patrol officers descended on the city at the weekend. The owner closed the bakery to prevent his staff from being targeted. Most of the other shops on Charlotte’s busy immigrant-centric street followed suit.

Dozens of people have taken up camp in the parking lot to wave signs of support for immigrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have been active in the city for months as part of Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda but things went up a level when border patrol arrived. Agents swiftly began buzzing through the place to make an armed show of their presence, followed at times by Charlotteans honking their horns in warning.

Gerardo Ortiz is Puerto Rican, which is to say, a born American with a Spanish accent, which was good enough for ICE and border patrol, it seemed. Protesting with the group, Ortiz said, he was picked up twice by federal agents prowling Charlotte’s streets this week while they looked to capture undocumented immigrants.

“They got me two times, once Saturday and once Sunday,” he said. “They come out from two vans and they tied my hands behind my back and they was telling me: ‘Give me your ID’ – but I got my hands behind my back.”

They carted him 20 blocks away and held him in a parking lot for a while before releasing him. He had never been arrested before, he said.

“I felt like I lose my liberty in that moment,” Ortiz said. “I was so nervous when I got home. I was crying like a baby, and it’s so terrible.” Some of his friends have been lost to the enforcement raids, he said.

Ortiz waved two huge Puerto Rican flags at cars driving by on Wednesday. One had a frog making off with the star, chiming with the tongue-in-cheek costume themes that have emerged at recent anti-ICE protests.

He said he was about ready to walk around with them like a cape in case agents decided to arrest him a third time. The Department of Homeland Security announced “Operation Charlotte’s Web” on Saturday, “surging” officers there and sending parts of the city reeling. DHS said they had made more than 250 arrests across the state.

They expanded their efforts to the Raleigh-Durham area on Tuesday, though they continued activities in the Charlotte area. A DHS press release cited the unwillingness of local sheriffs to honor ICE detainers for immigrants in local jails.

“Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens hurting them, their families, or their neighbors,” said DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed. There have been too many victims of criminal illegal aliens. President Trump and Secretary [Kristi] Noem will step up to protect Americans when sanctuary politicians won’t.”

Local leaders from Charlotte have condemned the enforcement action. Mecklenburg county commissioners passed a resolution of support for the immigrant community Tuesday night, calling for Customs and Border Protection and ICE to notify the county about any arrests. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg police department released a statement noting that its officers were not authorized to assist with ICE administrative warrants, and does not participate in ICE or CBP operations or help plan or execute federal immigration enforcement activities.

Critics in Charlotte describe the tactics CBP and ICE are using here as indiscriminate at best and deliberately designed to instill fear in the community at worst.

On Monday morning, CBP agents attempted to raid OurBridge, an after-school program with children from as far away as Tanzania in Charlotte. “ICE/CBP’s presence at ourBRIDGE had only one goal: instill fear, sending a message to us, our families, and to Charlotte’s immigrant community,” the program’s director posted in an Instagram message. “What happened today was unnecessary, unacceptable and another direct attack on the safety of our community. These actions by ICE, DHS & CBP do not keep ANYONE in Charlotte safe.”

The program has halted its services until further notice. Staff said they were no longer going to be available to the media.

“Ask me where all my foster kids go to school,” said Beth Clements, who fosters unaccompanied minors who came into the country across the US-Mexico border, in Charlotte. “It’s secret, because of stuff like this.” She described her care as an act of defiance against anti-immigrant heavy-handedness. This wasn’t about enforcement, she said, adding: “It’s about cruelty, from the administration down. This is about hatred, racism and cruelty … I don’t know how we clean this up. I don’t know how anybody looks anybody in the eye and says it’s OK that your family was stolen.”

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district has more than 141,000 students, the second-largest district in North Carolina. About a quarter are white; more than 30% are Latino. On a normal day, 9,000 to 10,000 students miss school, according to the authorities. On Monday, more than 30,000 were absent, mostly without an excuse.

Half of Sandra Speight’s special-needs class missed school, said the Charlotte teacher. “Three of those students out of my six are Hispanic and have told me that they are fearful to come out,” she said.

“One mom drives her blind and autistic daughter to and from school, and she will not bring her back to school until she feels safe. I’m hoping that this will die down by the end of the week,” she added.

She anticipates people will stay home until after Thanksgiving, saying: “I believe they’re trying to strike fear and intimidate people so that they will be afraid. That’s the only explanation that I have. I can’t explain why else would you do it.”

Homeland security’s Atlanta office, which handles North Carolina, referred inquiries to a CBP spokesperson who asked for questions to be submitted by email for comment.

The stretch of closed stores on Central Avenue is a visible sign of deep disruption across the state, as immigrants refuse to leave their homes. The enforcement activity landed in the middle of Charlotte’s global entrepreneurship week, a program for international trade development and social networking.

Organizers canceled an event at Camino Church that had been scheduled for Thursday, said Steven Lewis, executive director of the Boost Pad, a non-profit working on Charlotte’s economic mobility problems. Immigration agents had raided another Latino church over the weekend, making an arrest in front of the congregation while people scattered into the woods.

“Given what’s going on in Charlotte as it relates to the federal ICE agents being in town, they thought it was in the best interest of everyone to cancel the event,” Lewis said. “I’m interested in the safety of our community and the safety of our citizens, but I want to do it in a way that’s lawful. Charlotte is currently just another city that has had a federal fingerprint on it that isn’t good.”

Chef Ammalu Saleh runs Serengeti Kitchen, a Tanzanian restaurant in a popular incubator space for food startups near the University of North Carolina campus in downtown Charlotte. She tried to get halal lamb from Costco a few days ago – her best seller – to no avail.

“I went online on Sunday for it to be delivered, but there are not drivers to deliver it,” she said. “I feel most of the drivers are in the targeted population, so that is the issue. It is really impacting not only the targeted population, but even other individuals.”

Saleh is an American citizen. “But I am afraid,” she said. “What if they stop me? I’m not walking around with my passport. Or they feel like I’m a threat for some reason. I have a family. I have a business to run, and just for myself as well, it is a concern.”

Ezra Rash, a staff attorney at the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy, has asked his clients to stay home when they can.

“Every single client I’ve spoken to has said they’re staying home,” he said. “They’re not going out. They’re not going to work.” Rash has moved court appearances to the WebEx online platform. “We don’t want them even traveling to the office. It’s really dangerous to be on the road right now.”

His clients are often in the legal limbo of immigration law, following the rules for obtaining a visa and permanent status, but without permission to remain permanently in the United States. “They’re following processes. So they’re not undocumented in that they don’t have any kind of status in the United States … But that doesn’t protect them from prolonged detention.”

A sense of solidarity is driving local reaction, said Manolo Betancur, owner of Manolo’s Bakery. He has operated the bakery for 28 years, and built a charitable non-profit in tandem with his business.

“I’m not going to risk the integrity of my customers, my friends, my employees and my own integrity,” said the native Colombian and US citizen. “There are no colors here, man. There’s just one community here. This is the most welcoming side of town. Everybody’s friendly, and I don’t know if there’s another place in the world like east Charlotte, man, but I’m just so blessed, man, and I’m so lucky that we are located here. They’re not messing with me – they’re messing with all of our immigrant community.”

Thanksgiving is Betancur’s best time of year, he said, but he’s going to stay closed until his community feels safe again. “Whatever it takes,” he said. “Like I keep telling my son, you know, good people are always the majority, and we can never lose faith in humanity. I’m here to help, to support and to be part of the solution. I love this nation my kids were born in, and I will die for this country.”