Immigration Cops Arrest Mostly Non-Criminals In Charlotte
Less Than One-Third Of Border Patrol Detainees In Charlotte Were Classified As Criminals By DHS. Surprised?
As we have reported numerous times over the past few months, the Department of Homeland Security keeps spreading the MAGA gospel that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is ridding the country of “criminal illegal alien,” yet facts and data keeps showing that is largely not the case, and ICE and Border Patrol agents have overwhelmingly been arresting migrants who have no criminal records at all. Well — surprise, surprise — it turns out that fewer than one-third of the individuals arrested by Border Patrol in Charlotte, North Carolina, are classified as criminals. And that’s not some “woke,” commie, America-hating leftist reading from some “woke,” commie, America-hating leftist database saying that; that information comes straight from an internal DHS document.
From CBS News:
The government document undermines claims by Trump administration officials who said the crackdown, dubbed Operation Charlotte’s Web, was primarily focused on apprehending immigrants living in the U.S. illegally who also had criminal histories and posed a threat to public safety.
Roughly 200 green-uniformed Border Patrol agents recorded more than 270 immigration arrests during the Charlotte campaign, which began on the weekend of Nov. 15, the document shows. Fewer than 90 of those arrested by Border Patrol were categorized as “criminal aliens” in the document.
Those statistics do not include arrests made by officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, though Border Patrol played the principal role in Operation Charlotte’s Web. The document also does not specify the severity of the crimes of the detainees listed as criminals, nor whether their records included convictions or solely criminal charges.
And let’s be real about one thing: the fact that the DHS’s stats don’t include any details regarding what criminal records the less than one-third actually have is exactly why there’s no reason to even believe that much.
In fact, last month, we reported that an Illinois police officer who was accused of overstaying his visa was arrested by ICE, even though he had no other reported criminal offenses. Both DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin referred to him as a “criminal illegal alien.”
Mind you, the Hanover Park police officer in question, Radule Bojovic, was picked up by ICE during “Operation Midway Blitz,” which was sold to Americans as a fed operation targeting foreign gang members in Chicago, which, of course, turned out not to be the case at all.
And, again, ICE’s own data has shown approximately 72% of ICE detainees had no criminal records, despite ICE director Tom Homan claiming the opposite is true.
The point is, this government lies.
I mean, all governments lie, but the federal government under President Donald Trump is so reliant on round-the-clock propaganda — as well as its child-like ability to shout down any reporter who calls the propaganda out — that it treats the dissemination of factual information like it’s a criminal offense, which is exactly why the president was out here threatening Democratic lawmakers with “death” just for telling troops they didn’t need to follow unlawful orders. The Trump administration has claimed all of Trump’s orders have been lawful, completely ignoring the multiple federal judges who have ruled its National Guard deployments illegal.
Anyway, back to Charlotte.
While the DHS has claimed “The operation (in Charlotte) is not over and it is not ending anytime soon,” according to CBS, “separate internal documents say Border Patrol’s operation there concluded, with agents demobilizing from the area last week.”
Whether Operation Charlotte’s Web is a wrap or not, the city’s activists and community members are taking it upon themselves to monitor immigration enforcement and send the message to federal officers that they will not be ruled or intimidated in their own streets.
From the Guardian:
People outside of Charlotte’s political power structure have led the resistance in a grassroots movement that left little for Donald Trump to latch on to for formal reprisal. Activists focused on intensifying the discomfort of the agents while mobilizing a wide-ranging early-warning system for their targets that spanned from Tryon Street downtown to the mountain towns of western North Carolina.
Thousands of volunteers had been trained to observe and report on ICE activity in North Carolina even before the announcement of enhanced enforcement, Garcés said. Volunteers shifted focus to neighborhood patrols when CBP arrived, he added.
“How do we get people to work and school safely,” Garcés said. That had been a consistent problem even before the surge. “Every day, basically of the year, there has been early-morning traffic stops, ICE arrests that were where people were going to school or work.”
Activists patrolled neighborhoods where CBP and ICE had been seen operating, following vehicles and at times honking horns in warning. Border patrol agents arrested two women who had been honking horns in a truck behind their own, smashing a window to get at them.
Others documenting CBP and ICE presence at hotels in the region, tracking license plates and car types, going as far as searching Walmart back parking lots looking for early-morning staging areas in the towns surrounding Charlotte and in the Appalachian mountains.
Between the work of groups such as Indivisible and Siembra NC, they’ve been able to discern clear patterns in how immigration enforcement operates. Agents would target work vehicles early in the morning, for example, said Garcés. “It’s actually not out of totally out of our control to know where are these guys hunting people down,” he said. “We can know that and we can also be much more in communication about what we see and where we see.”
Earlier this month, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein declared that immigration enforcement efforts in Charlotte are “not making us safer,” but are instead “stoking fear and dividing our community.” As I wrote then, “Stein is essentially saying all the same things about these federal agents that have been said by officials in Illinois, Oregon, and California, as well as by NewsOne over the past several weeks.”
And the people in all of those states have been resisting the government in similar ways as the people of Charlotte and the surrounding areas.
This is simply what resistance to authoritarianism and white nationalism looks like.
Keep it up, folks. Let’s make America great for the first time.
SEE ALSO:
Operation Charlotte’s Web: Everything We Know About The Immigration Crackdown In North Carolina
ICE Raids Begin In Charlotte, North Carolina, And So Do The Protests
