The U.S. top Border Patrol commander touted dozens of arrests in North Carolina’s largest city on 16 November as Charlotte residents reported encounters with federal immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores.
President Donald Trump's administration has made the Democratic city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime amidst the increasing crime rates.
Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of U.S. 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 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.
Many 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 U.S. citizen said he was thrown to the ground and briefly detained.
Bovino posted pictures of people the Trump administration commonly dubs "criminal illegal aliens," meaning people living in the U.S. without legal permission who allegedly have criminal records. That included one of a man with an alleged history of drunk driving convictions.
"We arrested him, taking him off the streets of Charlotte so he can’t continue to ignore our laws and drive intoxicated on the same roads you and your loved ones are on," Bovino said.