Charlotte (CNN) — Before he got a call this week from CNN about reports US Border Patrol agents might be headed to Charlotte, North Carolina, City Councilmember Malcolm Graham had no idea such a plan was even in the cards.
None of the Charlotte officials CNN reached out to Tuesday or Wednesday about the reported move said they were aware of any plan for Gregory Bovino, the top Border Patrol official in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Democratic-led cities, and his officers to head to Charlotte, then New Orleans, according to two US officials familiar with the planning.
As of Thursday morning, Bovino has left Chicago with his agents and is headed to Charlotte, according to a source familiar with the planning.
“As of right now, there has been no coordination, no confirmation, no conversation from anybody. So we’re just kind of watching and waiting,” Graham, a Democrat, told CNN on Wednesday. “It’s just part and parcel of how this administration conducts itself. You learn things through tweets and media reports, no direct communication from anyone in authority. That, for me, is frustrating.”
It wasn’t until Thursday afternoon that a Charlotte official confirmed for the first time they had spoken with federal officials about the plans.
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden – who initially was unaware of the operation – has been “contacted by two separate federal officials confirming US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel will be arriving in the Charlotte area as early as this Saturday or the beginning of next week,” the sheriff’s office told CNN.
The sheriff’s office said details on the federal operation have not been shared with them and they have not been asked to assist with any enforcement actions.
The plans have put Charlotte on edge, as local officials seek to reassure residents they will be protected, even as they hold their breath, waiting to see whether they’ll be the next target in the White House’s high-profile, visibly aggressive push to send federal agents into blue cities as part of its immigration crackdown.
US Rep. Alma Adams, whose district includes much of Charlotte, wrote she was “extremely concerned about the deployment of U.S. Border Patrol and ICE agents to Charlotte” in a post on X.
“Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and what we have seen border patrol and ICE agents do in places like Chicago and Los Angeles – using excessive force in their operations and tear gassing peaceful protesters – threatens the wellbeing of the communities they enter,” Adams said.
In response, Bovino wrote, “Immigrants rest assured, we have your back like we did in Chicago and Los Angeles,” and urged undocumented immigrants to self-deport.
“Every day, DHS enforces the laws of the nation across the country. We do not discuss future or potential operations,” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN in a statement Thursday.
On Tuesday, McLaughlin had told CNN, “We aren’t leaving Chicago.”
Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are not involved in planning federal operations, nor have they been in contact with federal officials regarding the reported move.
Charlotte’s city police department doesn’t participate in federal immigration operations and would only get involved when there are warrants or criminal behavior under its jurisdiction, so “people who need local law enforcement services should feel secure calling 911,” said Mayor Vi Lyles, a Democrat, in a social media statement.
“We still don’t know any details on where they may be operating and to what extent,” Lyles said Thursday. “I understand this news will create uncertainty and anxiety for many people in our community.”
Lyles asked residents to refrain from sharing unverified information about enforcement activities, which create “more fear and uncertainty when we need to be standing together.”
Residents are already on edge
Officials in other cities have described Bovino as leading a law enforcement agency which deploys tactics that are frighteningly authoritarian and used by the president as a cudgel against Democrat-led localities and the people — citizens and noncitizens alike — who live in them.
Heavy-handed tactics, including immigration sweeps in parking lots and smashing car windows, have fueled alarm, including some among some in the Trump administration, while also garnering praise from senior Homeland Security officials.
Even though the federal government has not confirmed Bovino’s operation in the city, just the possibility has a community already on edge spooked.
The Carolina Migrant Network, a nonprofit that offers legal counsel to immigrants, told CNN Wednesday it is already receiving reports from frightened residents who believe they may have spotted Border Patrol in the city, though the organization said it has not verified any of those sightings.
“We’re getting ready. We’re retraining our ICE verifiers and uplifting our ICE verification network right now,” said Stefania Arteaga, the organization’s co-executive director.
“The fear is there. People are seeing viral videos of children getting pepper sprayed,” said Arteaga. “These are images that are going viral in our communities. There is fear that this could come to Charlotte.”
The sometimes violent, viral images from other cities, coupled with an increased immigration enforcement locally this year, have created a chilling effect in Charlotte, City Councilmember Dimple Ajmera said.
North Carolina’s foreign-born population has increased eightfold since 1990, according to state data.
“We have more than 150,000 foreign-born residents who call our city their home,” Ajmera told CNN. “Real anxiety and fear are in our communities. Bakeries and coffee shops are empty. Children are not being sent to school.”
On Friday, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein encouraged residents who see inappropriate behavior to record it on their phones and notify local law enforcement.
“We should all focus on and arrest violent criminals and drug traffickers. Unfortunately, that’s not always what we have seen with ICE and Border Patrol Agents in Chicago and elsewhere around the country,” the governor said in a statement. “The vast majority of people they have detained have no criminal convictions, and some are American citizens.”
Local officials were in the dark
Ajmera also told CNN that federal officials hadn’t yet coordinated with the city, saying, “We are probably going to find out at the same time the community finds out.”
Stein, a Democrat, told reporters after an unrelated event in Charlotte on Wednesday afternoon that he’d reached out to the White House after seeing reports in the media, but “we have not heard from them, so we don’t know what their plans are.”
The governor acknowledged he was concerned by some of the images that came out of the operation in Chicago.
“We don’t know what their plans are here for Charlotte. If they come in and they are targeted in what they do, we will thank them. If they come in and wreak havoc and cause chaos and fear, we will be very concerned,” he said.
State Sen. Caleb Theodros, a Democrat representing Charlotte, called the potential operation in his city “political theater.”
The lone Republican who will sit on the city council next year, after Democrats flipped a GOP seat in this month’s election, told CNN undocumented immigrants who commit crimes should be deported, and the country needs a process to identify illegal immigrants who have not committed crimes and “where appropriate, establish a legal basis for their presence in this country.”
“CBP operations in any community should be coordinated with state and local authorities to avoid anxiety and disruption among legal residents,” Ed Driggs told CNN.
Why would CBP head to Charlotte?
Charlotte hasn’t been previously publicly singled out as an enhanced immigration enforcement target by the Trump administration in the same way as other cities like Chicago, Los Angeles or even New Orleans.
And while other cities Trump has targeted with his immigration crackdown are closer to US borders, Charlotte is hundreds of miles away from both the northern and southern edges of the country.
But it is one of the places that Trump has focused on in recent months as part of his crusade against crime in populous, Democratic-run cities.
Intense public outrage swept across the country earlier this year after chilling surveillance video was released showing a young Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, being stabbed to death on the city’s light rail train by a suspect who had a lengthy criminal history and documented mental health struggles.
Trump posted about the stabbing on Truth Social, criticizing Democratic policies and promoting a Republican candidate in next year’s closely watched Senate race.
“North Carolina, and every State, needs LAW AND ORDER, and only Republicans will deliver it!” he wrote.
Though the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department has said data shows the city has seen a reduction in violent crime this year, three Republican members of Congress representing districts around the Charlotte area asked the governor just this month to send the National Guard to Charlotte to help curb crime, highlighting a spike in homicides in the city’s uptown area.
And Bovino himself will be in familiar ground if he finds himself in Charlotte: He is originally from western North Carolina, graduated from Watauga High School and has degrees from Western Carolina University and Appalachian State University.
On October 14, Bovino responded to an account on X that said they hoped Bovino’s team would visit the North Carolina city.
“We’ll put Charlotte on the list!!!” Bovino wrote.
Asked by CNN last month where he planned to go next, Bovino said any decision would be based on intelligence.
“We’ve got a great leadership team that we work for that we look to for leadership and that would be President Trump, (Homeland Security Secretary) Kristi Noem, and all of those folks,” he said. “We pay attention to what they say, and we pay attention to what our intelligence says. We marry those up, and we hit it hard.”
What have local officials said about federal immigration enforcement previously?
State Republican leadership has long targeted Charlotte and Mecklenburg County’s approach to immigration enforcement. Though Charlotte is not a “sanctuary city,” it does claim it is a “Certified Welcoming City,” a formal designation for cities with commitments to immigrant inclusion.
Shortly after taking office in 2018, Mecklenburg County Sheriff McFadden ended the county’s decade-long 287(g) partnership with ICE, which allows local and state law enforcement to perform some immigration enforcement duties. McFadden was also an outspoken opponent of a new state law that expanded ICE authorities over people detained in local jails and required sheriffs to work more closely with ICE officials. That law went into effect in October after the Republican-controlled General Assembly overrode Stein’s veto.
A few weeks ago, McFadden announced that he’d had a “productive” meeting with ICE officials where they discussed how to “establish a better working relationship” and improve communications, along with courthouse procedures.
“I don’t want to stop ICE from doing their job, but I do want them to do it safely, responsibly, and with proper coordination by notifying our agency ahead of time,” McFadden said in a statement.
Arteaga, of the Carolina Migrant Network, said her organization has observed a significant spike in ICE activity around the Charlotte area since the start of the year and a further increase in activity since the new law went into effect last month.
Charlotte’s local officials weren’t the only ones caught off guard
Charlotte isn’t the only city where officials say they’ve been kept in the dark before an operation like this might begin. The situation in Charlotte right now mirrors, in a more muted manner, the reaction from local officials in Chicago before “Operation Midway Blitz” began there.
In August, CNN reported that Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said the administration had failed to contact his office or the mayor, ahead of what was then the reported deployment, and he slammed the lack of coordination.
The New Orleans Mayor’s Office has not responded to CNN’s outreach about possible future Border Patrol operations there.
Stein noted that Border Patrol “has national jurisdiction so there is nothing that we could do, even if we were to want to, to stop them from coming. We’re just going to have to see what their plans are. We want to hear from them so we can plan accordingly.”
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Dianne Gallagher, Priscilla Alvarez and CNN
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