On Saturday, Nov. 15, the Department of Homeland Security launched an immigration enforcement operation known as “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” deploying Customs and Border Protection agents to Charlotte and the Triangle. Their job was to “target criminal illegal aliens terrorizing Americans,” according to the DHS website.

A recent update from DHS stated that over 425 arrests were made in the Charlotte area. Hundreds of other people were detained and released throughout the state, including in Raleigh and Durham. Intense raids and other enforcement actions like checkpoints resulted in business closures, children being absent from school and widespread fear.

Despite initial contradictory information from Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office and federal officials, it was confirmed on Thursday, Nov. 20 that the operation was officially over, though Immigration and Customs Enforcement will continue its regular enforcement activities.

Ivanna Gonzalez McNinch, a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals-protected immigrant from Mexico currently living with her husband in Charlotte, said she spent those six days in a state of terror.

Gonzalez McNinch came to the United States when she was 3 years old. She spent most of her life undocumented and without status, until she received temporary protection under the DACA program when she was 18 years old.

After marrying a U.S. citizen in January of this year, her application for an Adjustment of Status to receive a residency card, or green card, is currently pending. According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, “80 percent of the cases are completed within 13 months.”

Before moving to Charlotte, Gonzalez McNinch said that in the back of her mind, she worried about immigration court being there. Having worked for four years as a legal assistant at an immigration law firm in Wilmington, Gonzalez McNinch deeply understood the problematic nature of the immigration system. But it was important for her to be near her husband.

“Part of me did, you know, rationally have that fear of, ‘Wait, but what happens if something bigger were to occur?’” she said.

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On Sunday, Nov. 16, Gonzalez McNinch reviewed her work calendar for the upcoming week. Now employed as a legal assistant at Sussman Law Firm, PLLC, Gonzalez McNinch chose to focus on family law, a decision she attributed to both her mental health and to help her be more prepared for law school.

She knew they were going to be short-staffed that week with some co-workers traveling out of the state. She knew one of the firm’s clients had to go to the courthouse and they needed her there to help translate and ease the situation. She knew there was no way for her to stay home.

“As a DACA recipient, I’m still not overly protected, but I was more protected than that client was at the time because he had no status, and if he were to get arrested, they were going to empty out the jail, essentially,” Gonzalez McNinch said. “So I had to go to work.”

Monday morning came and she was terrified. To get to the courthouse, she had to drive close to an hour, across all of Mecklenburg County and into Union County. The possibilities of what an ICE or CBP agent might think or do if they pulled her over, or stopped her at a checkpoint, and saw that her driver’s license says “No legal presence in the U.S.” were too awful to think about, yet they plagued her thoughts throughout the drive. She had multiple panic attacks.

“Even though I’m authorized to work, even though I’ve been raised here my whole life, even though I have done everything in my power to be a law-abiding part of the community,” she said. “I’ve gone to college here, I grew up here, I went to elementary school, middle school, high school here, I did community service, I played sports, I was truly integrated into the community. And still, my driver’s license is going to give me away.”

She said the drive felt like an eternity, but she made it to the courthouse safely and met with their client. Afterwards, she remembers the attorney asked her if she was doing OK, because she knew Gonzalez McNinch was Hispanic and assumed she was worried for her community. As Gonzalez McNinch started to share her stress, she realized her co-worker didn’t understand the full extent of her fear. She showed the attorney her driver’s license, who asked, “But haven’t you lived here your whole life?”

“I have lived here since I was 3 years old,” Gonzalez McNinch said. “I do not have a cognitive memory of Mexico besides one, and it was of me riding a tricycle with my cousin. But I can’t even remember my cousin’s face — I just remember it was me riding a tricycle where we used to live. That is all I have. The rest is I grew up in North Carolina. I grew up in a very small town. I grew up alongside U.S. citizens, and I’ve lived in North Carolina longer than most of my friends. I’ve lived in North Carolina longer than my husband.”

Later that day, Gonzalez McNinch asked to speak to her boss. She remembers shaking in her office and breaking down because not only was she terrified about what was going on outside, she also didn’t want to miss work and let people down over something she couldn’t control.

“I was very fortunate that my employer was very understanding, and she said, ‘If it keeps getting worse, just let us know. Text me every morning, let me know if you’re coming in, staying home, whatever you need to do. We are here for you, and we will take care of you,’” Gonzalez McNinch said. “So I worked from home the rest of the week.”

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Gonzalez McNinch’s heart breaks when she thinks about that week and how much fear she felt for not just herself and her community, but her husband.

“As someone who married outside of her culture, someone who married someone who was not born with distress, who was not born with the burden of not being a U.S.-born citizen, it was hard to watch how stressful and how scary it was for him,” she said. “I would never wish that feeling for someone I love deeply, nor an enemy.”

She also felt like she had to be strong for her parents. Six hours away from Charlotte in the Outer Banks, she knew there wasn’t much for them to do if something were to happen, and she worried that sharing her true feelings would only create more anger and fear for them.

She felt isolated. She attributed her ability to suppress or numb her emotions around her family to the hustle mentality that she said is ingrained in many Hispanic households.

“It’s like, you just keep going, and you crash out, and you cry, but you don’t do it in front of people. You do it by yourself,” she said.

Gonzalez McNinch struggled to cope. She said she had to stay away from social media because her feed was filled with terrifying videos and stories. She received constant notifications from her Ring camera app that ICE was a mile away from her home.

“There’s no escape at home. There’s no escape in social media. There’s no escape out on the streets. It was just so suffocating,” she said. “It was suffocating.”

That feeling of isolation was familiar to Gonzalez McNinch, growing up in the predominantly white community of the Outer Banks. She said the few Hispanic friends she had were all U.S.-born, so she felt like even they couldn’t fully relate to her experience and struggles as an immigrant.

When she went to college at UNC Wilmington, she said she found many more people who shared and understood the experience of growing up in a Hispanic household.

“Here, in Charlotte, there’s even more of us,” she said. “But none of the people I know either have no status or DACA status. They’re all either turned citizens or born citizens or residents. So each person has their own story. Each person has their own struggles.”

Gonzalez McNinch said many of her co-workers at the law firm are from Latin and immigrant descent. She read aloud a text thread between her and a group of co-workers during this week. One of her co-workers, who she said has become a close friend, texted, “Also you guys, my cousin, who is a U.S. citizen, literally was taken by ICE earlier today. After they investigated him, they realized he was a U.S. citizen and let him go. He had to walk back to where he was taken from. Just be careful you all.”

Gonzalez McNinch said stories like these, and many others she heard from both social media and through her lived experience working with emergent cases of clients being detained, are what contributed to much of her fear. She said it was happening right in front of her.

Despite currently taking a hiatus from immigration law, Gonzalez McNinch has always known it is her passion and her ultimate career path. She said the week during “Operation Charlotte’s Web” reminded her why.

“I can sit here and tell you my whole story of how my brother and I were separated from my mom when I was 3, and how we went to California and we didn’t know if we were gonna see my parents again and it was just us two,” she said. “I can tell you how sad it was, and the real reason why I don’t like guns and X, Y and Z, but it’s like, why am I gonna harp on it when I’ve built who I am today? I can’t fix it — I can’t go back in time and control other people’s actions. I can only control what I’m doing now.”

By reframing her childhood experiences and trauma as a source of resilience rather than sorrow, Gonzalez McNinch has found renewed commitment to the communities she hopes to serve.

“That’s what’s always motivated me — I know my story isn’t the worst one. It’s not even close. It’s not even on the same scale of what others have gone through, and that’s what motivates me to keep helping my community and just being a voice for them and advocating for them,” Gonzalez McNinch said. “At the end of the day, a brown egg and a white egg have the same things inside. We are all human beings, and we all deserve respect and human decency and human rights.”

She said it is difficult to put into words how incredibly frustrating and unfair the immigration system and the recent enforcement operations are, especially for those who have spent the majority of their lives as law-abiding people contributing to their communities throughout the United States.

“They’ve been your neighbors. They’ve been inviting you to the cookouts. They’ve been going to your churches. Their kids are in your school. They’re learning with you. They’re growing with you. They’re paying taxes — they’re not getting any rights to them. They’re not getting retirement plans. They’re not getting health care. They don’t get any loans. They’re not getting a vote,” Gonzalez McNinch said. “And it gets to the point where it’s like, ‘When will I be enough? When will my family be enough? How do we break this cycle, if the system is rigged against us? What do we do now, when our whole life is here and we forgot what our home country is like?’”