This story was produced with the Border Belt Independent, which is part of The Assembly’s statewide network of local news outlets.
President Donald Trump’s initiatives to increase deportations of undocumented immigrants have sparked fear and confusion in immigrant communities across North Carolina, prompting a spike in calls to an advocacy hotline and a scramble among school districts to tell families how they would handle law enforcement showing up on campuses.
Siembra NC, a Durham-based immigrant advocacy group, said it received more than 300 calls to its hotline in the two weeks after Trump took office on January 20, a drastic increase from the group’s typical call load, which was hardly over 100 for several months at a time last year. Callers included people hoping to connect with immigration attorneys and those wanting help crafting emergency plans for undocumented relatives, said Nikki Marín Baena, the group’s co-founder and co-director.
Other calls came from people who reported sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. Siembra NC said it is not aware of any recent ICE raids in the state, but Marín Baena said undocumented immigrants living in North Carolina nonetheless seem more alarmed in recent days than they did in the initial weeks of Trump’s first presidential term in 2017.
“We’re seeing rumors that we did not see in the last administration,” Marín Baena said. “And they picked up so quickly and in such a widespread way that it feels so different than last time. People’s propensity to share things without asking where this information came from also feels different.”
Trump promised on the 2024 campaign trail that he would conduct a massive deportation operation, and his administration has touted its efforts so far. Most ICE detentions do not happen through large-scale raids, though. The majority—about 70 percent—take place when an immigrant is arrested on an unrelated charge and is held in a county jail, Marín Baena said.
Immigration attorneys in North Carolina say federal law enforcement officials have begun detaining people—mostly those with suspended final deportation orders—during routine check-in appointments at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Charlotte. Attorneys in Wake County recently had an encounter at a courthouse with a plain-clothes ICE agent, the INDY reported.
The Department of Homeland Security recently changed federal policy to allow officials to arrest undocumented immigrants at schools and churches, which were treated as safe spaces under previous administrations. The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction said in a statement that the change was a “key concern” for public schools, adding that “we remain committed to ensuring all students in North Carolina receive a high-quality education, regardless of their immigration status.” Law enforcement, including ICE, must have a warrant to legally enter school grounds.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education said in a statement on February 3 that no “immigration enforcement action” has occurred on its school campuses. Wake County school officials also said they were unaware of confirmed cases of ICE at schools.
“Should such an event occur, the principal should gather as much information as possible and ask the official to wait in the front office while the area superintendent is consulted for guidance,” a memo from Wake County Public Schools said. “If an immigration official insists that he or she has a legal right to enter the property immediately or that any delay to seek guidance would put others at imminent risk of physical harm, the request should be granted, and the encounter should be documented.”
Uphold the Law
More than a million people born outside the United States live in North Carolina, accounting for 9.3 percent of the total population, according to Carolina Demography. In 1990, less than 2 percent of the state’s population was foreign-born. More than half of the state’s immigrants are non-citizens, data show. The Migration Policy Institute estimated that about 296,000 unauthorized immigrants lived in the state in 2019.
People from Mexico account for 22 percent of the state’s foreign-born population. Many others are from Central America, the Caribbean, or Asia.
Immigrants move to North Carolina for economic, political, environmental, and other reasons, according to the American Immigration Council, a non-profit focused on immigration policy reform. Hispanic growth across the state has been driven by Mexican farmworkers who obtain temporary agricultural visas, according to the UNC School of Government.
Counties with the state’s largest cities, including Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham, have the largest concentrations of immigrants. But several rural areas that serve as agricultural hubs are also home to many immigrants.
In Bladen County, where Smithfield Foods employs more than 4,500 people at a hog processing plant, Sheriff James McVicker said last month that “several rumors” were circulating about ICE raids. Like many meatpacking facilities across the country, Smithfield Foods has long relied on immigrants for labor. Last month, company CEO Shane Smith told the Associated Press the company is trying to reduce the number of undocumented immigrants working at its plants.
Meatpacking facilities have been targeted for ICE raids in the past. In 2018, 680 immigrants in Mississippi were detained by ICE at several meatpacking facilities across the state. Nearly 1,300 immigrants were detained in a 2006 raid of meatpacking facilities across six states.
ICE typically asks local law enforcement for help with raids, McVicker said, adding that his office had not heard from federal officials.
“We will assist if asked, when asked to do so,” he said in a Jan. 28 Facebook post.“These are laws and we must uphold the law.”
The state General Assembly last fall passed HB10, which requires sheriff’s offices to notify ICE when certain undocumented immigrants are in their custody and to hold them for up to 48 hours if the agency requests it. Then-Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, but Republicans overrode the veto.
Some sheriff’s offices in the state have said they will comply with the law but not go beyond it to assist ICE agents.
“Federal immigration law is not the responsibility of local officers and damages law enforcement’s trust within the immigrant community,” Buncombe County Sheriff Quentin Miller said in a statement last week. “The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) will not be partnering with ICE to help enforce federal immigration laws beyond following HB10.”
Catholic churches have seen significant growth from Hispanic residents, including in North Carolina. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops last month pushed back on Trump’s policy change to allow immigration enforcement in churches, saying it would be “contrary to the common good.”
The dioceses of Raleigh and Charlotte issued a measured statement last week, saying they can connect parishioners with legal services related to immigration, including work authorization, family reunification, and pathways to citizenship.
“We will not counsel anyone to thwart or resist proper law enforcement but will continue to provide education about individuals’ legal rights,” Charlotte Bishop Michael T. Martin and Raleigh Bishop Luis Rafael Zarama said in the statement.
There are no detention centers in North Carolina to house people arrested by ICE. Detainees are usually sent to the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia, said Durham-based immigration attorney Yesenia Polanco. When the facility gets too crowded, people might be sent to centers in Florida or Louisiana.
The Trump administration is looking to re-open family detention centers for migrants, a practice that ended in 2021 under the previous administration but was used during the president’s first term and that of his predecessor, Barack Obama, according to NBC News.
Marín Baena said it’s tough to verify ICE activity, including rumors that agents have been seen in grocery and home improvement stores. She said her organization tries to verify claims by interviewing witnesses, checking ICE detention records, and working with immigration lawyers.
Growing uncertainty about what’s in store has not only heightened fears, which can lead immigrants to withdraw from public life, Marín Baena said. Anxiety can also increase the chance of misinformation and lead immigrants to believe they have fewer rights than they actually do.
“Reminding people that they have rights—both where they live and where they work—is really important to us,” she said.
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Heidi Pérez-Moreno is a reporter at the Border Belt Independent. She previously wrote for the Washington City Paper and spent nine months covering travel and local transportation for The Washington Post. She graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill, and she calls Miami home.
Ben Rappaport is a reporter at the Border Belt Independent. A graduate of the Hussman School of Journalism & Media at UNC-Chapel Hill, he previously worked for the Chatham News + Record.
