The immigration operation ‘Charlotte’s Web’ has left at least 81 detainees, including Mexicans and Hondurans, after starting over the weekend in North Carolina’s largest city, where the governor, Josh Stein, accuses the Border Patrol of “stoking fear”.
The Democratic politician charged that in Charlotte they have seen “masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting U.S. citizens based on their skin color, racial profiling and grabbing random people in parking lots and on sidewalks.”
First arrested in North Carolina
🚨🇺🇸 #PoliceAbuse | A U.S. citizen recorded the moment federal agents smashed his car window in Charlotte, North Carolina, and forcibly removed him from the vehicle, amid increased immigration enforcement operations in the area.
The man,… pic.twitter.com/y4AsEoaW7M
– RTVC News (@RTVCnoticias) November 16, 2025
“This is not making us safer. It is stoking fear and dividing our community,” he said.
Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino, who led the massive raids in Los Angeles and also in Chicago, was present over the weekend for operations in Charlotte.
His arrival has raised concerns among community organizations and migrant advocates, who recall his role in one of the largest and most aggressive detention deployments in California and fear that a similar strategy is now beginning in North Carolina.
“Eighty-one (migrants), of whom many had significant criminal and immigration history, are off the streets. This was done in just five hours,” Bovino reported on his social networks, where he posted photos of captured Mexicans and Hondurans.
This is the first balance of the ‘Charlotte’s Web’ operation that President Donald Trump’s administration began on Saturday with the deployment of the Border Patrol in North Carolina.
This state has close to 1 million immigrants, of which more than one-fifth are Mexican, according to the American Immigration Council.
The raids in Charlotte, North Carolina’s largest city, will target “illegal alien criminals” who have come there for protection “under sanctuary policies,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.
DHS claimed that nearly 1,400 immigration detainers have not been honored, but Governor Stein noted that “the vast majority” of those detained by Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) do not have a criminal conviction.
“If they know we have violent criminals in Charlotte who are undocumented, we want them out too. Everyone wants to be safe in their communities, but the actions of too many federal agents are doing the exact opposite,” Stein stated in a video.
To record abuses with telephones
🚨⚡️Discusión between Americans and the U.S. Border Patrol arresting immigrants for deportation. It happened in Charlotte, North Carolina pic.twitter.com/rurp5ytkED
– El Ojo (@ElOjoEn) November 17, 2025
The state governor asked the population to record with their phones the actions of federal agents and demonstrate peacefully, after protests by hundreds of citizens over the weekend against the presence of ICE and CBP, as has occurred in Los Angeles, Chicago and Portland.
Cases such as that of Willy Aceituno, a U.S. citizen born in Honduras, who reported that immigration agents broke the window of his car in a parking lot and threw him to the ground despite having documents, went viral on social networks.
But DHS accused him of “erratic behavior” that sought to impede the work of federal forces, in addition to alleging that an agent was injured near University City because a citizen crashed his vehicle during an operation.
Prior to Charlotte, border agents have been present at the offensives unleashed by the White House in Los Angeles in June and Chicago in September.
Filed as: First arrested in North Carolina
With information from EFE
