A top Border Patrol commander touted dozens of arrests in Charlotte on Sunday as residents in North Carolina's largest city reported encounters with federal immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes, and stores.
The Trump administration has made the Democrat city of about 950,000 people its latest target for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime, despite objections from local leaders and what they call downtrending crime rates.
Gregory Bovino, who led hundreds of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on a similar effort in Chicago, took to social media to document a few of the more than 80 arrests he said agents made.
He posted pictures of illegal aliens and wrote of one on X, "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."
The effort was dubbed Operation Charlotte's Web.
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 family, and it's just so sad to see that this community now has this target on their back."
Bovino's operations in Chicago and Los Angeles triggered a flurry of lawsuits over the use of force, including wide deployment of chemical agents. Democrat leaders in both places accused agents of inflaming community tensions.
Bovino, head of a Border Patrol sector in El Centro, California, and other Trump administration officials have called their tactics appropriate for growing threats on agents.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees CBP, did not respond to inquiries about the Charlotte arrests. Bovino's spokesman did not return a request for comment Sunday.
Elsewhere, DHS has not offered many details about its arrests.
By Sunday, reports of CBP activity around Charlotte were "overwhelming" and difficult to quantify, Greg Asciutto, executive director of the community development group CharlotteEast, said in a morning email
"The past two hours we've received countless reports of CBP activity at churches, apartment complexes, and a hardware store," he said.
City council member-elect JD Mazuera Arias said federal agents appeared to be focused on churches and apartment buildings.
DHS said it was focusing on North Carolina because of sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local authorities and immigration agents.
"We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed," Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.
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