Are immigration crackdowns happening here?

How the Trump administration’s enforcement push is playing out in North Carolina.

Welcome back to Down from DC, your guide to how the White House, Congress and the federal courts affect us here in North Carolina. If you are new, you can read more about us in our first issue here.

President Trump’s order to bomb nuclear sites in Iran and the fallout from that decision have dominated national and international headlines this week. The world is watching to see whether the ceasefire between Iran and Israel will hold, or whether a new Middle East conflict that could draw significant U.S. military involvement is on the horizon.

North Carolina is watching too: There are more than 90,000 troops based here — at Fort Bragg, Camp Lejeune and smaller air stations.

Retired Marine Major General Tom Braaten told News 12, the ABC affiliate in New Bern, that the conflict feels close to home for military communities in the eastern part of the state. “If you're in the middle of the country where there are no bases, then the concern, it's a different ball game, you're watching the news just to see what happens,” he told News 12. “Here, we're watching the news to see what our friends are going to be doing.”

Before that huge story broke, the huge story out of Washington and across the country was the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration. You’ve probably heard about raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles, which set off a wave of protests, and maybe those in New York and Texas, but not so much about North Carolina, even though enforcement activity is definitely happening here.

It’s hard to get a full picture of immigration enforcement for a number of reasons, but we can piece together some of what has been happening here based on reports from news outlets around the state.

Immigration agents have been waiting to arrest defendants outside Charlotte Immigration Court, where specialized judges hear cases from North and South Carolina, The Charlotte Observer reported earlier this month. Lindsay Williams, a spokesperson for ICE, told the Observer’s Ryan Oehrli in an email that the tactic saves time. “It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be. It is also safer for our officers and the community. These illegal aliens have gone through security and been screened to not have any weapons.”

Advocates for immigrants told the Observer that the practice undermines due process. “Courthouses must be places where people can safely seek justice, defend their rights, and fulfill civic obligations — without fear of abduction,” the Carolina Migrant Network said in a statement.

In his first days in office, President Trump and his administration did away with previous guidance that prohibited immigration officials from conducting raids in “sensitive areas” and specifically authorized ICE to make arrests at courthouses.

Last month, advocacy groups told Axios Charlotte and WBTV about arrests by ICE at churches, schools and apartment complexes in Charlotte. ICE did not respond to questions from reporters from either outlet, making the raids hard to confirm.

The Assembly’s Sayaka Matsuoka reported on the arrest of a 23-year-old undocumented immigrant from Guatemala outside a Greensboro laundromat. Marlon Ivan Mendez’s lawyer had rescheduled a court hearing that morning over a driving while impaired charge after learning ICE agents were at the courthouse.

“The officer told me that they had a list of people who they were detaining, but they refused to show me the paper,” Mendez’s fiancee, Jasmine Lopez, told The Assembly. She said lawyers told her that there was nothing they could do to prevent Mendez’s deportation. Lopez is expecting their child this month.

Anxiety about detentions has spread to North Carolina farms, where an estimated 100,000 people born overseas work as laborers through the H2A visa program. Business North Carolina reported that while these laborers are here legally, farmers and state officials worry that they could be swept up in raids. “There’s a lot of confusion over who can come here with a valid guestworker visa and those who don’t have that,” said Ray Starling, general counsel at the N.C. Chamber.

ICE has arrested an average of 1,200 people a day across the country this month, according to government tallies CBS News obtained. Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller told Fox News and immigration agents themselves last month that the administration’s goal was 3,000 arrests per day, and while they aren’t reaching that target, they’ve still hit a record high: More than 56,000 people who were detained by ICE are currently in detention, according to ICE reports analyzed by Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher in his Substack. Kocher said nearly a third of those detained have no criminal history other than a violation of immigration law.

Immigration enforcement was at the center of President Trump’s remarks earlier this month during a visit with soldiers at Fort Bragg to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday. There, Trump defended his deployment of the National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to quell protests.

“Generations of army heroes did not shed their blood on distant shores only to watch our country be destroyed by invasion and third world lawlessness here at home like is happening in California,” Trump said. He added that if he hadn’t deployed the National Guard over the objections of California’s governor, “We'd be burning today just like their houses were burning a number of months ago.”

North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson, a Democrat, signed on to a brief filed by attorneys general from 21 states in support of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lawsuit over the deployments of troops in LA. The brief warns that using troops against protestors “sets a chilling precedent that puts the constitutional rights of Americans in every state at risk.” The case is under review by the federal district court in San Francisco.

The following weekend, thousands of North Carolinians joined the national “No Kings Day” of protest against the president’s policies, including his crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Protesters filled the streets in urban centers like Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Winston-Salem and Greensboro, but were not confined to Democratic leaning cities. North Carolinians in towns like West Jefferson, in the northwest corner of the state, Fayetteville, home to Fort Bragg, and Nag’s Head on the Outer Banks also marched. (Cardinal and Pine has a roundup of images and videos from protests across the state here.)

North Carolina’s elected officials are deeply divided over the role of local law enforcement in helping ICE meet its quota of arrests. ICE has enlisted elected sheriffs and other local law enforcement agencies to help make arrests and, in some cases, hold people in local jails. In North Carolina, 22 sheriff’s departments — largely in rural counties–- have signed agreements with ICE to assist with enforcement, but as of this writing we couldn’t find out much about how much immigration work law enforcement in those counties are actually doing. None of the urban counties in the state have signed such agreements. Law enforcement officials who have not signed contracts with ICE are still required by a 2024 state law to cooperate with immigration agents if they are looking for someone who is arrested locally for a serious crime.

The GOP-controlled state legislature passed two bills this month that would require more cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE. One requires state law enforcement agencies to act on behalf of ICE through agreements similar to the ones made with sheriffs in the state. The second strengthens existing law on cooperation between sheriffs and immigration agents. For example, it requires sheriffs to hold someone in their custody for 48 hours, even those charged with nonviolent crimes, if immigration agents have an order for that person’s arrest.

Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, vetoed both bills. “My oath of office requires that I uphold the Constitution of the United States,” he said in a press release of the second bill. “Therefore, I cannot sign this bill because it would require sheriffs to unconstitutionally detain people for up to 48 hours after they would otherwise be released. The Fourth Circuit is clear that local law enforcement officers cannot keep people in custody solely based on a suspected immigration violation.”

Senate Leader Phil Berger (R) said in a press release after the veto that Stein had “proved where his allegiances are. He’d rather prioritize his far-left donors and their dangerous open-border policies over the citizens of North Carolina who are desperately pleading for us to put an end to the illegal immigration crisis. I look forward to the Senate overriding his veto.” Republican legislators got to work this week to persuade the single Democrat needed for the three-fifths majority required for an override.

Do you have a question about immigration we didn’t answer, or want to give us some feedback? Send Natalie and Phoebe a message. If you found this newsletter useful, please help us get the word out about it by forwarding it to a friend.

Here’s what else is coming down from DC.

Medicaid:

• The federal budget bill we reported on in our last issue is still working its way through the Senate with stringent work requirements for Medicaid intact. A North Carolina Health News report last week flagged health officials’ warning that thousands of working North Carolinians could still lose coverage by failing to meet the requirements to prove employment.

The Supreme Court:

• The Carolina Journal reported that the U.S. Supreme Court was scheduled to hear arguments in a closed-door session this week over whether the State Health Plan, which insures state employees and teachers in North Carolina, will cover medical procedures for people seeking gender-affirming care. The court was also hearing a slew of similar petitions from other states in the same session, according to The Hill, on the heels of issuing a decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender affirming care for minors.

Federal funding cuts:

• A special court in rural Wilkes County that was designed to send defendants with drug addiction to treatment instead of prison may never open because of spending cuts by the Trump administration. The Marshall Project reported that the local district attorney, chief judge, defense attorneys and a nonprofit drug treatment program had collaborated to open the recovery court this summer with a $900,000, four-year grant from the U.S. Department of Justice. The department froze the grant in April and so far hasn’t restored it.

• WUNC reported last week that a Durham-based global health organization will halt its work to prevent the spread of tropical diseases, tuberculosis and other illnesses in Côte d'Ivoire after the Trump administration drastically cut funding for foreign aid programs. "We were very close to the elimination for two diseases," Virginia Troare, who works for FHI-360, told reporter Rusty Jacobs. Those diseases included a bacterial illness that causes blindness and a mosquito-borne illness that disfigures victims.

• Readers, we want to hear from you. Are federal budget cuts affecting your North Carolina community? Tell us about where you are seeing them and what impact they are having at downfromdc@gmail.com.