Although U.S. Customs and Border Protection are appearing to decelerate their recent surge of operations across North Carolina, local immigrants are increasingly turning to legal resources to prepare for potential arrests, detentions and deportations.

U.S. Border Patrol officers began moving into North Carolina on Nov. 15 for an immigration enforcement sweep that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security dubbed “Operation Charlotte’s Web.” Two days later, the DHS released information about the arrests of over 130 Charlotte-based individuals, 44 of whom were identified as having criminal records. 

Arrests and detentions continued as border patrol operations expanded to Raleigh, Cary and Durham. A spokesperson from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said that immigration enforcement officers have arrested around 370 individuals across the state since the operation began. 

In a statement to The Durham Voice, City of Durham Communications Director Amy Blalock wrote that the Durham Police Department was not involved with the recent federal actions in the city. Blalock said there is no requirement for federal agencies to notify local law enforcement of their operations. 

The Durham Voice was unable to confirm the number of individuals arrested by immigration enforcement in Durham at the time of publication.

Although the arrests and border patrol sightings have slowed, the DHS spokesperson said federal agencies “continue to target some of the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens as Operation Charlotte’s Web progresses.”

Siembra UNC, a grassroots organization that advocates for immigrants, told the Raleigh News & Observer that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will deploy 50 agents across the Triangle throughout December.

As this targeting continues, citizens, lawful permanent residents, non-immigrants on visas and undocumented immigrants alike are reaching out to legal nonprofits and private firms to get a better sense of what may be coming.

In Charlotte, ‘you can feel it’

Ivanna Gonzalez McNinch, 22, said she didn’t leave her home in Charlotte for the entire week of Operation Charlotte’s Web.

“There was ICE a mile away from my place,” she said. “There were ICE officers three minutes away from my work.”

Gonzalez McNinch came to the United States when she was 3 years old. She is one of more than 525,000 members of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows non-resident children in the United States to seek temporary protection from deportation and to be eligible for work permits.

Gonzalez McNinch said she knew few people growing up in the Outer Banks who shared her experience as an immigrant or understood the complexities of what immigration entailed.

“I just always wanted to be able to help my community,” she said. “And that started off really, really early — from translating for my peers in elementary school all the way through high school, and then going to college for political science, to one day going to law school.”

For most of the past four years, Gonzalez McNinch worked on immigration law as a legal assistant in Wilmington. She now works in Charlotte at Sussman Law Firm, PLLC, which primarily practices family and immigration law, and switched her personal focus toward family law in July for her mental health.

Through her professional experiences working in immigration law, Gonzalez McNinch has aided in adjusting residency, DACA and work permit statuses, as well as working with U Visas, a nonimmigrant status designated for victims of crimes who could help law enforcement or government officials investigate the criminal activity.

At Sussman Law Firm, Gonzalez McNinch said the influx of requests during Operation Charlotte’s Web reached a level where attorneys were unable to efficiently do their jobs, even with a system of designated employees to answer calls.

In response, the firm released a video online addressing people’s concerns. They explained that the sheer volume of incoming calls was making them unable to quickly help the clients who had been detained.

“And those clients who get detained, they need immediate help, right? I mean, we need to be able to find where they are,” Gonzalez McNinch said.

She said attorneys across Sussman Law Firm, whether they specialized in family or immigration law, had to accommodate many virtual appointments for clients during the beginning of Operation Charlottes Web as ICE was operating checkpoints, making it risky for many people to drive around the city due to racial profiling.

Being an immigrant herself and someone who actively works in immigration law, Operation Charlotte’s Web was especially heavy for Gonzalez McNinch.

She recalled talking with her husband — an American citizen of Scottish descent, who she said had never before “beared the weight of what it was to be an immigrant” — about the fear that border patrol could come knocking on her door or her family’s home. It made her feel like she needed therapy again, she said.

“You can feel it very intensely,” Gonzalez McNinch said. “From the people who have no status at all; to those who are first generation, second generation immigrants who have their US citizen passport, they have all their documentation; residents; they feel it. Everyone just feels so unsafe.”

Detainment over state lines

Although the majority of the individuals arrested by Border Patrol officers remain publicly unidentified, a Nov. 17 DHS press release named 11 Charlotte-based detainees described as “the worst of the worst.”

According to the Online Detainee Locator System — a federal tool that allows anyone to search for adults being held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody or who have been in CBP’s custody for over two days — four of the 11 identified detainees are being held at the Folkston ICE Processing Center in Georgia.

The Durham Voice was unable to confirm the seven remaining individuals’ locations at the time of publication.

ICE’s website lists two active ICE field offices in North Carolina, both based in Charlotte, and one detention center in Alamance County. The Raleigh News & Observer reported that recent detainees were also held at an ICE office in Cary before being moved first to the New Hanover County Detention Facility and then to an undisclosed third location.

Shane Ellison, a clinical professor at Duke Law school, said that most individuals detained in North Carolina are transferred to the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia. However, he said, Stewart may not be the final stopping point; detained individuals are often relocated to other facilities for various reasons, adding further complexity to their rapidly-evolving cases.

Ellison is the supervising attorney of Duke’s Immigrant Rights Clinic. Through the clinic, student attorneys defend clients against deportation, partner with advocacy groups to impact litigation and share resources for immigrant communities.

Ellison said a large focus of the clinic is ensuring all of its clients are informed about the federal changes to immigration law. He said the field has grown increasingly complicated, with many of the second Trump administration’s enacted changes being “overwhelmingly negative” for immigrants seeking legal counsel. 

As the law has grown more complex, the effort going into each case has similarly increased.

“Never during the time in which I’ve been providing pro bono legal services for noncitizens has the nonprofit capacity been such that it could satisfy the demand for those services,” he said. “But the need for our services, I would say, has never been greater.”

Gonzalez McNinch said most of the people calling about detained people are family members or friends. After they reach out, she said an attorney is then able to assess the case and contact clients.

If a loved one is detained, the National Immigrant Justice Center recommends first confirming their Alien Registration Number (A#), a unique identifier that the DHS assigns to nonresident immigrants and that ICE should give upon request.

Anyone can use an A# — or, alternatively, someone’s name and country of origin— to confirm where a detainee is being held through the DHS locator tool. Once a location is confirmed, family and friends can reach out to the detention facility to determine a process to send money, schedule calls or potentially organize visits with detained loved ones. 

When someone is detained, they should be read their Miranda rights and are allowed to pursue legal representation. Attorneys are able to call detention facilities to speak with their clients.

Ellison said that various changes to immigration law under the federal Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) have made getting bond increasingly challenging. The ability to be released from detention facilities is more difficult today than it was before the current federal administration, he said.

If federal agents realize they have wrongfully detained someone, they are constitutionally required to release the individual immediately, but not to provide any sort of reparations or further action.

“I had a friend who was working in the legal department at our firm,” Gonzalez McNinch said. “Her cousin, a U.S. citizen, was detained, and then he actually had to be in the facility for multiple hours. They researched it and they found out that he is a U.S. citizen — and they made him walk back to where he was detained.”

Working under an ‘evolving legal standard’

Ellison said that although most of his clients aren’t in positions where they would normally be at risk of arrest or detention, the hyperfocus on immigration enforcement in the current federal climate is increasing risk for everyone.

Once a client becomes detained, he explained, their case moves much quicker.

“For that reason, a lot of our time has been ensuring that cases, even that are scheduled out years into the future, are thoroughly prepared now in the event that we’re facing the worst and our client is detained, that we have to be prepared to move forward under very short notice,” he said.

The shift in speed and increased enforcement are two of many recent changes to the realm of immigration law. A number of the Duke clinic’s clients are seeking asylum as they aim to fit the U.S. definition of a refugee, a definition which Ellison said is being reevaluated.

Under federal law, a refugee is a special immigrant status given to those who are of “special humanitarian concern” to the United States. Refugees must have demonstrated they were persecuted or fear persecution due to their race, religion, nationality, political stance or membership in a particular social group. A refugee must also not be resettled in another country and must be admissible to the United States.

Ellison said each legal element defining a refugee is subject to interpretation by the BIA, which has made a slew of decisions alongside the U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and her office to narrowly construe each category.

“The current rule is that you have to prove that the government of your client’s country is not just unable or unwilling to provide protection, but actually condones their persecution or is completely helpless to stop it,” Ellison said. “And there’s been some other additional decisions that have been issued, sort of making it increasingly difficult to satisfy that evolving legal standard.”

A recent report found that the asylum grant rate in the United States has been sliced in half over the last year.

Kokou Nayo, the Durham City-County immigrant & refugee affairs coordinator, said there are about 325,000 residents in the city of Durham. Of those residents, approximately 15.2%, or 48,000 individuals, are foreign-born with differing citizenship statuses.

Nayo’s work focuses on helping immigrants and refugees integrate into Durham’s civic, economic and cultural life — three “buckets,” as he describes them. He coordinates collaboration between local government departments and community organizations to support foreign-born community members.

“The immigrant community is really part of the Durham community,” he said. “You cannot really talk about Durham or North Carolina or the United States without talking about immigrants.”

Border Patrol’s presence in Durham, Nayo said, has resulted in heightened fear across the city. He said the strain on immigrant communities is affecting every aspect of their lives, including decreased school attendance, reduced work performance and even increased fear of visiting healthcare professionals.

“There’s actually nothing that the city and the county would do against the immigration enforcement,” he said. “That is a federal responsibility. I don’t want to make people think that the city and the county could stop the federal immigration enforcement.”

What the city and county can do, he said, is protect the rights of residents and ensure their safety in any other means.

Nayo, his coworkers and their local partners have been working hard to keep the Durham community safe, educate foreign-born employees on their rights and ensure everyone can access necessary services across the city and county.

Ellison has also been undertaking significant work to prepare resources for the community about this change and others impacting immigration. He said he’s trying to do more pro se — the legal term for when an individual has to represent themselves in court without an attorney — assistance for those who may find themselves in that situation.

Planning ahead amid an era of uncertainty

The National Immigration Law Center’s website states that all immigrants, even those without legal status, have some rights in the United States. If an individual has a valid immigration status, the NILC recommends making sure they are carrying their lawful permanent resident card or immigration paperwork. If individuals have applied for status or have open cases, the NILC recommends having a copy of the papers reflecting that to show law enforcement if they are being arrested.

For undocumented individuals, the NILC recommends carrying proof of living — including rental contracts, church records or mail with clear dates — if one has lived in the United States for at least two years. Proof of that extended residency can protect someone from a rapid deportation. If someone cannot prove they have lived in the U.S. for over two years, the federal government may deport them without letting them see a judge.

Immigrants have a right to remain silent. If immigration enforcement stops you, the NILC recommends staying calm, politely asking what agency the individuals are from and asking if you’re free to leave. You may also record the interaction. If immigration enforcement knocks on your door, they cannot enter without a valid judicial warrant; you can confirm if they have one by asking them to slide it under the door as well as requesting officers show their badge or other identification through a window or peephole. 

“They’re not using warrants overly,” Gonzalez McNinch said. “Or, they say they have a warrant and they just play tricks.”

Enforcement officers may lie to try to get inside or force themselves in your home — if they make their way indoors, remain calm and vocally state that you do not consent. 

If detained, the NILC recommends being honest and calmly but repeatedly voicing your fear to return to your home country. The organization also urges individuals not to sign any documents without speaking to a lawyer first; the government does not provide legal service, which means it’s safer to connect with immigration attorneys beforehand to be safe.

There are multiple community resources — including private law firms, more affordable nonprofit support and free or low-cost power of attorney clinics — that are ready to provide their services to undocumented individuals.

Ellison suggests that immigrants should prepare for any possibilities by ensuring they understand their options, the strength of their potential case and how various changes may impact its outcome.

“If folks can get plugged in with qualified legal counsel just to do a bit of safety planning and to better understand their options and how these changes are impacting them in particular, that’s often a great step,” Ellison said.

However, he also said he recognizes that the ability to get counsel is likely more difficult today than it has been in a long time.

Gonzalez McNinch said that the firm she works at, which is privately owned and not a nonprofit, has been taking to Facebook and TikTok live to address questions and share resources for scared immigrants in real time.

She said many clients and families coming to her workplace just want to be heard — to have someone hold their hand through the phone and listen to them cry and scream with support and professionalism.

“It’s heartbreaking,” she said. “It’s scary, because as someone not only who’s been in that field but also as an immigrant themselves [and] sees her parents, her family, in every single case, it’s very much like, this could be my family next.”

Edited by Emma Unger and Jesse Carrico