Charlotte Becomes Latest Target of Trump’s Immigration Crackdown

(Bloomberg) — A new deployment of federal agents arrived in Charlotte, North Carolina, on Saturday as part of President Donald Trump’s expanding immigration enforcement campaign, marking the latest push to carry out large-scale arrests in Democratic-led cities.

“We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed,” Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

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She didn’t provide any details of the deployment, including how many officers were there or what their duties would be.

The arrival in Charlotte marks the latest expansion of a campaign that has already swept through some of the nation’s largest left-leaning strongholds. Since the summer, Trump has sent federal agents into Washington, DC, Chicago, Los Angeles and Portland, arguing that local leaders have failed to control crime and immigration.

The city drew federal attention in August after a Ukrainian refugee was fatally stabbed aboard a light-rail train. The suspect in the killing is a US citizen, but Trump has repeatedly cited the incident as evidence of what he calls a breakdown of public safety in the city.

Five-term Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, Mecklenburg County Board Chair Mark Jerrell and Stephanie Sneed, the chair of the county’s board of education issued a statement Saturday saying the operations “are causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty in our community” but urged that reactions to the operations be peaceful.

The Charlotte Observer reported that agents smashed the window of a pickup truck, grabbed the driver’s keys and demanded to know if he was “an illegal immigrant.” The driver, Willy Aceituno, told the newspaper he was born in Honduras but had been a US citizen for six years. The paper also reported that agents had stopped seven men at random and demanded to know their immigration status.

Enforcement actions are expected to ramp up in New Orleans in the coming weeks as well, according to reports from CBS News and the New York Times.

Local leaders in the targeted cities have pushed back, disputing the need for federal intervention and criticizing what they describe as heavy-handed tactics by federal units, which have faced repeated allegations of excessive force and warrantless arrests. Charlotte officials say violent crime in the city has dropped about 20% from last year, including a 24% decline in homicides and a 19% drop in aggravated assaults, according to police data.

The deployment to Charlotte follows a campaign in Chicago that led to increasingly violent confrontations between heavily armed and helmeted Border Patrol agents and local residents protesting the effort.

Greg Bovino, the Border Patrol sector chief previously stationed in Southern California, has defended his agents’ actions and said such operations will continue despite public outcry and multiple lawsuits.

In an interview with Fox News on Thursday, Bovino said he and other Border Patrol agents were in West Virginia training for future operations and could be sent back to Chicago or deployed to other cities, including Charlotte.

–With assistance from María Paula Mijares Torres.

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