As Border Patrol generates fear, neighbors and organizations step up
Vecinos provides free, bilingual medical care to low-income patients.
Donated photo
As of noon Thursday, ICE and Border Patrol have engaged in operations from Lenoir to Raleigh, largely avoiding Asheville and much of Western North Carolina. But both agencies are generating a climate of fear statewide, regardless of the city they choose to target.
Department of Homeland Security officials announced the initial Queen City action, dubbed “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” on Nov. 15, wherein Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said agents had arrived to ensure “Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed.”
According to the Migration Policy Institute, “a growing volume of research demonstrates that not only do immigrants commit fewer crimes, but they also do not raise crime rates in the U.S. communities where they settle.”
A Nov. 17 DHS press release touted the operation’s success in Charlotte, which had “resulted in the arrest of over 130 illegal aliens in just two days.”
Immigration advocates, however, see this past weekend only through the lens of government terror.
“This is not about public safety. This is about destroying [Charlotte],” said Stefania Arteaga, co-executive director of Carolina Migrant network.
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Fear can be a powerful contagion.
“We have folks in … places where we have no reason to believe that ICE is going to show up. People are already not leaving their homes. Children are not going to school,” said Iliana Santillan, founder of Nahual Media and advocacy organization Brava NC and executive director at the latter.
Santillan told The Smoky Mountain News that Brava NC is receiving an influx of requests for mental health support.
“Parents are having a really hard time talking to their children about what's going on, especially after seeing images of people being abducted at churches, walking outside, doing their work,” she said.
Fear in WNC
Marianne Martinez is the CEO of Vecinos, a Franklin-based nonprofit providing free English- and Spanish-language medical care to low-income individuals, many of whom are Latino.
Martinez said among her clients, she is witnessing “fear and anxiety and panic for themselves. For their family members. For the community in general.”
Though ICE and CBP claim arrestees are criminal offenders, a Sept. 2025 NPR article stated that “in some cases immigration officers are executing major dragnets and arresting large groups of people and then determining if each person is in the U.S. illegally by interrogating them after they've been stopped.”
One incident of such behavior was challenged by the ACLU of Southern California, and a federal court ruled that agents cannot rely on considerations such as someone’s skin color, place of work, Spanish-speaking ability or vehicle to evaluate reasonable suspicion of threat.
In September, the Supreme Court reversed that decision. Though the SCOTUS ruling is not final, the American Immigration Council alleged it “clears the way for racial profiling.”
“I think that people are seeing what's happening in Charlotte — that your citizenship status has really nothing to do with whether ICE breaks into your vehicle while you're trapped in it and removes you forcibly from your vehicle and beats you … Well, it's all on video, right?” Martinez said, referring to a recent viral incident.
Martinez said following CBP’s Charlotte announcement, the clinic worked through logistics of conducting widespread telehealth appointments in anticipation of many staying home.
“People vote with their feet, right? And so if they're not comfortable with leaving their homes, they're going to just not come into the clinic,” she told SMN on Monday.
Vecinos had a false alarm soon after opening its doors to patients earlier this week to patients.
“I was a very direct, ‘Immigration is on site,’ and people got really freaked out, and it went on social media, and it was not true,” she recounted.
By Thursday, Martinez reported that the clinic wasn’t experiencing any major issues, although it had weathered “some no shows and several folks who opted for telehealth,” to minimize potential risk.
Healthcare is only one affected industry when it comes to missing appointments and services. On Nov 18, 30,000 Charlotte-Mecklenburg students were absent from school.
Santillan said similarly, significant numbers of Latino children statewide are not attending class.
“If [students] miss more than 10 days, the school system has to take legal action. So, we're really concerned about the repercussions,” she said.
Arteaga, who “lived under the largest workplace raid under the Bush administration in the in New Bedford, Massachusetts,” has a unique perspective on immigration enforcement fallout. Multiple families lost their homes, she said, and the raid forced residents out of town “because nobody wanted to work there.”
Even still, Arteaga believes Bush-era immigration tactics paled in comparison to the current CBP presence in North Carolina.
“Never have I ever seen the militarization of law enforcement turned against this people, because that's what it's doing,” the Carolina Migrant Network co-executive director said.
According to Arteaga, this week’s operations have manufactured an unsettling political landscape at the municipal level.
“At the end of the day, we're under siege by the federal government,” she said.
Neighbors helping neighbors
Siembra NC, a statewide immigrant rights organization tracking ICE/CBP incidents and organizing watches noted in a Nov. 18 press release that countless community members have stepped up for their targeted neighbors.
“The number of people turning out, volunteering and speaking out helps us know that North Carolinians do want safety and security. Safety is created by community members looking out for each other and standing up for each other, not by masked federal agents who are here to create chaos and bring fear,” said Nikki Marín Baena, Siembra co-director.
Arteaga recalled an incident in which a street vendor was targeted by border enforcement officials — and everyday passersby stepped in to help.
This individual is “well known as the guy who sells flowers in that corner for years, and CBP rolled up on him, and he ended up running into the woods. And when people on that major intersection saw him getting attacked by CBP, people pulled over, honked their horns, they got out of their vehicles. They were doing what they could to protect our community,” she said.
Outside of Charlotte, Santillan emphasized that it’s important to support local networks so folks are prepared ahead of time.
Her organization is striving to “make sure that communities get some tangible, concrete resources, such as food, school supplies, toys — whatever. Just that we don't have to wait until ICE is in our backyards.”
“We can start showing care and concern for our community right now,” she added.
But the work doesn’t necessitate developing new systems — it requires collaborating with existing ones.
Santillan said Brava will tap organizations that have “been [in the community] for a while and have them guide us to where we can deliver these types of resources.”
Martinez agreed that community food distribution could be a way for individuals to assist one another during this moment.
She also encouraged donations to organizations funding affected families, “because people, if they're staying home, they're not getting paid. But the power companies will expect to get paid, you know what I mean?”
The Vecinos CEO explained that, unlike groups such as Siembra, her nonprofit can’t “mobilize protests” or “put the word out that ICE is in town,” because “if we stop doing health care to do these other things, then who's going to do health care?”
Still, Martinez said that this moment calls for “responding to the needs of the community.”
Professional advocacy, she told SMN, involves “pushing to our patients that, ‘Your healthcare is still important. And if you're not comfortable leaving your home, don't just not show up. Call us and turn your appointment into telehealth.’”
“Our mission is health and wellness services, and right now that that means something different than it did even six months ago” such as distributing food resources, she said.
But at the end of the day, Martinez admitted she didn’t have all — or many — of the answers.
“I think everybody in my circle, at least, we're all just kind of looking at each other, going, ‘What the hell do we do?’”
Visit 4thworkplace.org to learn more about designating your business a Fourth Amendment workplace.
Visit ojonc.org for information about ICE/CBP sightings in your area.
Visit siembranc.org for opportunities to help protect your neighbors.
