CBP operation reveals left's immigration extremism | Worker: Illegals are 50% of Raleigh City Hall construction crew | Socialists, anarchists, & students protest for open borders?
No. 151 — Nov. 16-Nov. 22, 2025
Immigration is once again consuming the news cycle, with the Department of Homeland Security heading east from higher-profile enforcement actions in Operation Charlotte’s Web to make arrests in the Triangle area, with confirmed detentions in Durham, Cary, and Raleigh.
Although very few in number compared to the estimated half-a-million illegal immigrants in our state, the open arrest of just dozens of uninvited foreigners sent shockwaves through the “community,” with empty worksites (including Raleigh’s new City Hall), over ten thousand absent students, and protests both in the streets of Raleigh and Durham and at a number of high schools.
While some of the opponents of immigration enforcement have taken the apparent briefness of this operation as evidence that their activism had “driven ICE off,” there seems to be no evidence that CBP had any goal in excess of the limited number of arrests they carried out, before heading back to Charlotte and leaving ICE to continue its local day-to-day operations.
Whether or not the response of the left was an intended side effect, this situation has also exposed growing radicalism on the mainstream left in opposition to any and all immigration enforcement, from governmental entities catering to and siding with lawlessness to the leading role taken by the anti-American leftism of the Party for Socialism and Liberation to the embracing of the ultra-radical Siembra NC to the public endorsement of “direct action” and/or violence against immigration officials, even extending to a proposal for the governor to raise an anti-ICE militia.
The messaging put out by the left and amplified by their media allies continuously conflates the targeting illegal immigrants with “immigrant communities,” Hispanics in general, or even all “Black and Brown” people in America: the only Americans who seem to have been caught up by the immigration enforcement in any regard are those who directly associate with illegal immigrants, or are purposefully involving themselves for obstructive purposes.
Beyond the aliens directly seized for deportation, it remains to be seen how exactly the impact of this operation will ripple out: will the more proactive enforcement efforts encourage law-breaking foreigners to voluntarily self-deport to their country of origin? Will the misinformation and fearmongering of the left turn public opinion and electoral results? Or will the extreme reaction solidify the resolve of the right to pursue a more restrictive immigration policy? Only time will tell.
Immigration enforcement surges to the Triangle
On Monday, word made it to the media through Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell and Governor Josh Stein that Border Patrol agents from Customs and Border Protection would be coming to the Raleigh area after making over a hundred arrests over the weekend in the Charlotte area as part of Operation Charlotte’s Web.
The CBP resources had reportedly left the Triangle area by the end of the week after an unspecified number of arrests.
Charlotte’s Web was announced as the “surging” of resources to “target the criminal illegal aliens,” with a press release listing six illegal aliens who were released back into the public in North Carolina despite ICE detainers after being charged with crimes including vehicular theft, DWI, and the sexual abuse of children.
(Although Mecklenburg County, like Chatham, Durham, and Wake, has been categorized as a “sanctuary” jurisdiction due to refusing to cooperate with immigration enforcement, the legislature has passed a law removing the discretion of local jurisdictions in refusing to comply with ICE detainers.)
Illegal aliens and crime
The feds may be prioritizing aliens who have been charged or convicted of additional crimes while in the country illegally, but it does not appear that it is only illegal aliens with a criminal record who have been detained.
This discrepancy in messaging and action has been exploited by some Democrats like Stein, who issued a statement in response to Monday’s news, “call[ing] on federal agents to target violent criminals, not neighbors walking down the street, going to church, or putting up Christmas decorations,” while accusing CBP of “targeting people simply going about their lives because of the color of their skin.”
However, every illegal alien that has committed an additional crime in the United States was at one point an illegal alien whose sole offense was violating immigration law, and every crime committed by an illegal alien is a crime that would not have happened if immigration law had been effectively enforced.
Additional sentence for illegal alien convicted of deputy’s murder
For instance, only one out of the four illegal alien siblings implicated in the 2022 murder of Wake County Sheriff’s Deputy Ned Byrd appears to have been charged with a serious crime prior to the homicide, despite numerous law enforcement encounters between them resulting in repeated tickets for operating a vehicle without a license, expired/fraudulent insurance and tags, driving with a revoked license, etc.
Alder Alfonso Marin-Sotelo had been arrested in May 2021 after being caught with a concealed firearm in Orange County, but the charges were dismissed by the office of District Attorney Jim Woodall after he failed to appear at two court hearings.
On Monday, Alder Alfonso Marin-Sotelo received a federal sentence of seven years in prison after pleading guilty to escaping the Virginia jail he was being held in prior to the murder trial; Alder Alfonso is currently serving a life sentence without parole after pleading guilty in state court to Byrd’s murder.
His older brother, Arturo Marin-Sotelo was allowed to plead down from first degree murder to accessory after the fact, and was sentenced earlier this year to 7-10 years in prison.
Their sister, Adriana Marin-Sotelo, was sentenced to 10 months incarceration in 2023 after pleading guilty to aiding Alder Alfonso’s jailbreak, on the condition that she would not be deported to their home country of Mexico.
The fourth sibling, Rolando Marin-Sotelo, still faces charges for accessory to the murder for allegedly disposing of the vehicle his brothers were driving the night of the murder.
Siembra NC: even criminals must stay
However, many Democrats have taken a much more radical stance than Stein, aligning themselves with organizations like Siembra NC which oppose any action to enforce immigration laws, even against convicted criminals.
Earlier this year, Siembra NC organized an protest at the Durham Courthouse after ICE agents were spotted “looking for a convicted felon,” at which they were joined by Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam (a Canadian-born Muslim), Durham City Councilmember Javiera Caballero (a Chilean immigrant), and Durham School Boardmember Natalie Beyer.
Siembra NC’s “ICE Watch” trainings have been previously shared by the Wake County Democratic Party as well as this week by elected officials like Sen. Jay Chaudhuri (D-Wake), and was included as as “resource” in a “joint message” sent out by Orange County local and law enforcement officials.
The Mayors of Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Hillsborough, and the Chair of the Orange County Board of Commissioners joined together to “strongly denounce actions that sow fear among community members, undermine our local community safety efforts, and infringe on the human rights of our most vulnerable friends and neighbors.”
The Orange County Sheriff and the Chiefs of Police of Carrboro, Chapel Hill, and Hillsborough, instead of suggesting that illegal aliens submit themselves to law enforcement, encouraged those “vulnerable to immigration enforcement operations” to “stay tuned to trusted news sources, know your rights, and have a plan.”
Beyond peaceful protest
Siembra NC is also behind “Ojo Obero,” a website which constitutes one of the efforts to provide live tracking of ICE activities:
.Another example would be “Ice in My Area,” allegedly shared on Facebook by Morrisville City Councilmember Satish Garimella, an Indian immigrant:
Although one could presume that the purpose of such endeavors is “merely” to allow illegal immigrants to evade enforcement efforts, ICE agents have been the subject of violent assault by radicals who consider the execution of their official duties to be “kidnapping,” including an attack in July involving up to sixteen members of a “North Texas Antifa Cell” which left one officer with a nonfatal gunshot wound to the neck, and an attack on an ICE field office in Dallas in September in which a sniper “indiscriminately” fired on the facility, killing two detainees and seriously injuring another.
Closer to home, a 27-year-old man plead guilty in federal court this week to calling the Charlotte Police Department in May and threatening to drive to the city and “swiss cheese” any ICE agents he could find making arrests, while also making reference to the April 2024 shootout in which four law enforcement officers were killed while attempting to serve warrants in Charlotte.
In addition, an anti-ICE activist with a previous conviction for resisting an officer was charged with using his van as a deadly weapon to assault, resist, or impede federal officers after a wild vehicular chase on Sunday in which he swerved onto medians and drove the wrong way in traffic to avoid the federal immigration officers attempting to box him in.
According to NewsNation, Border Patrol agents in Charlotte found their tires slashed on Tuesday morning after the location of the hotels at which they were staying were shared by activists.
Racial targeting, or racial solidarity?
Along with the more radical revolutionary language of denying the legitimacy of all immigration enforcement arrests as “kidnapping,” a popular talking point by both activists and Democratic politicians has been to portray immigration enforcement as indiscriminately sweeping up even American citizens in operations based on race, ethnicity, or “skin color.”
For instance, Democratic Senate candidate and former governor Roy Cooper condemned the current operations as “randomly sweeping up people based on what they look like, including American citizens and those with no criminal records, risks leaving violent criminals at large while hurting families and the economy.”
Depending on the estimate, the foreigners (from Europe or Canada) which the “equity” proponents would be comfortable with the arrest and/or deportation of only make up perhaps 8% of the total population of illegal aliens in the country.
Therefore, any immigration enforcement which is even close to being race-blind will inevitably fall afoul of the DEI analysis which labels any inequality of outcome as “racist,” regardless of the behavioral patterns of the peoples involved.
As the following items will demonstrate, the blurring of the lines between the legal and the illegal among the “Hispanic community” is more a result of bias on the part of law enforcement, but rather how certain communities among the inhabitants of the United States choose to identify, associating themselves more closely with their nation of origin, with their Hispanic ethnicity, or as non-white “people of color” ahead of any identity as Americans.
Who was being arrested?
Although we do not have exact figures or a list of names of those who were arrested during the week’s CBP operations in the Triangle, there are community reports (mainly by anti-enforcement activists) that draw an outline of the operations.
For instance, federal agents were captured on video taking a man into custody at the Home Depot in Cary (a known magnet for illegal immigrants), with activists unsuccessfully “honking and blowing whistles and screaming at the (federal) agents.”
In Durham, agents were spotted near a strip mall on Avondale Drive chasing down and detaining three individuals who attempted to flee, with anti-ICE Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam herself witnessing the incident.
Siembra NC also claimed to have confirmed detentions in Raleigh including “landscape workers” as well as “people detained while walking on the sidewalk in front of the Morazan Restaurant in Raleigh, walking outside the Tree Top Apartments in Raleigh, and at several other apartment complexes.”
One detainee whose sob story has been dug up by local media is Fatima Issela Velasquez-Antonio, a 23-year-old illegal alien and resident of Wendell who was arrested near a “Raleigh-area HVAC business” she was employed by. Velasquez-Antonio, a Honduran national, entered the country illegally at the age of 14 to join family in the Triangle after her mother died of cancer and her father was killed by a gang, according to her family.
Velasquez-Antonio was educated at the taxpayer’s expense, graduating from Corinth Holders High School in Johnston County, and had recently been able to purchase a home in Wendell with her boyfriend, despite her illegal status.
The New Hanover County Jail has confirmed that Velasquez-Antonio was among nine detainees temporarily transferred to the facility from the ICE office in Cary, the remainder of whom were men aged 24-59.
Although there have been numerous reports on social media of immigration enforcement in other Triangle municipalities over the week including Chapel Hill, Garner, Clayton, and Smithfield, they are of dubious validity with nearly every local and state law enforcement department having been mistaken at some point as “la migra” by illegal aliens and their allies.
American citizen wrongfully detained?
If one was to whole-heartedly trust left-wing media outlets, even the staunchest opponent of immigration might be disturbed by headlines such as “’They basically just kidnapped me’: US citizen taken by Border Patrol in Cary.”
According to the narrative, 18-year-old Fernando Vazquez was innocently working as a landscaper at the Lightbridge Academy daycare and preschool location under construction on Reedy Creek Rd. in Cary when he was randomly targeted by immigration agents for no reason other than the “color of [his] skin,” only to be ultimately released several miles away after his legal status was finally acknowledged.
However, even the story as presented in a left-wing outlet like NC Newsline contains some hints that this may not a reliable narrator accurately relaying the circumstances.
Firstly, Vazquez admits that his reaction to seeing the agents was to call his father, also a worker on the sight, and tell him to hide. Then, he started swearing at them in Spanish in order to “make time to stall them” so his father and other workers could escape. Finally, the immigration officials did actually arrest another worker in the vehicle along with Vazquez, who appears to actually have been an illegal alien and was not released.
The Spanish-language reporting on the situation by the local Univision channel as well as a video recorded in Spanish by Vazquez reveal even more incriminating details, all but outright stating that Vazquez’s father and fellow workers were illegal immigrants (and not just fearful legal Hispanics), who were able to escape through Vazquez’s obstructionary actions.
Vazquez also appears to have told Univision that he refused to actually tell agents that he was born in America until he had already been placed in the vehicle.
Vazquez’s father, meanwhile, had successfully evaded the search by immigration officials by hiding in their work truck; Vazquez then returned to the jobsite after his release and drove his father to a safe place where he could hide.
None of the reports appear to mention the immigration status of Vazquez’s mother, suggesting that his “legality” may solely be due to “birthright citizenship,” the legal concept under which the child of two illegal aliens is granted citizenship merely due to a physical presence in the United States at the time of his birth, which President Trump has attempted to end via executive order.
Economic impact of illegal immigration
When one individual comments on social media that a particular work site, road, store, or classroom seems emptier than usual, it is merely an anecdote of dubious veracity: perhaps the quiet is merely an ordinary fluctuation, or perhaps the observer is allowing their expectation to influence what they perceive.
However, when this dip in activity during periods of active immigration enforcement are noticed on a broad scale, backed by journalists’ on-the-ground reporting, or supported by hard data, it becomes much more likely to be indicative of just how much the widespread violation of immigration laws is effecting how our communities develop and operate.
For instance, when it was noticed that the construction site of Raleigh’s new City Hall was quieter than usual, construction worker Bob Johnson confirmed that it was quieter than usual due to the massive number of illegal immigrants which are employed there on a day-to-day basis: “They’re very helpful. They make up half of our workforce. This is a dying trade.”
At the 815-home South Creek master planned community on the southern edge of Chapel Hill, general manager Travis Thompson confirmed to the News & Observer that the only 20 out of 100 contractors showed up for work on Monday: “It’s like a ghost town right now...People are just nervous in general, so they’re not showing up to work.”
On the other side of Carrboro, legal immigrant Juan Guerrero noted that only 1/10 of the usual 90 workers showed up to build the 72‑home Jade Creek community on Old NC 86, with foreman Jose Ibanex confirming that even “citizens” were frightened by (false) reports that they risked being “taken” by immigration officials.
Mainstream media has also reported on a number of retail institutions who temporarily shut down or noticed a significant business decrease due to a shortage of staff and/or customers:
Amparo Beauty Salon (Cary), business slow: 90% of clientele Hispanic, 10% Arab (link)
Salon Evans (Raleigh), closed, immigration arrest at nearby business (link)
Underground Art (Raleigh), business slow, nearby businesses shut down (link)
Mr. Burro (Raleigh), closed (link)
Gym Tacos (Raleigh), closed (link)
G Tacos (Raleigh), closed (link)
La Superior (Durham), closed (link)
Guglhupf (Durham), closed (link)
El Toro Loco Taqueria (Raleigh), closed (link)
In addition, Downtown Durham Inc. announced that its holiday tree lighting would be postponed from last Friday due to the CBP raids, and the Mexican consulate in Raleigh reportedly had less than 1/6 of its ordinary traffic.
Educational impact of illegal immigration
With the 1982 Supreme Court decision Plyler v. Doe requiring taxpayers to fund the same education for illegal immigrants as for citizens, the threat of an active immigration enforcement operation lead to a measurable decrease in attendance by students in three of the Triangle’s largest school districts
Although not so drastic as the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, in which the rate of absence increased to 21% from 8.9%, the News & Observer verified attendance drops last week in the Wake, Durham, and Chapel Hill-Carrboro school districts.
In the Wake County Public School System, the absentee rate increased by over 60% from 7% to 11% with nearly 8,000 additional students absent on Tuesday, with a similar increase in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools from 5% to 8% with an approximate 350 additional students absent.
In the Durham Public Schools, the much higher base rate of absenteeism increased from 18% to 30%, with approximately 3,000 additional students absent.
WCPSS, CHCCS, DPS, as well as the Orange County Schools each issued statements declaring their support for illegal immigrants and their children earlier this year after Trump’s DHS rescinded a policy defining schools as “protected areas” from immigration enforcement, though the messages from CHCCS and DPS no longer appear to be available on their websites. (There do not appear to have been any immigration enforcement actions taken at these schools over the past week.)
Supporting organizations
In addition to the government entities signaling their support or at least sympathy for illegal immigrants, a number of corporations and non-profits have joined in to lend their support.
These include free delivery offered by the Durham and Clayton locations of Compare Foods, a Hispanic-focused grocery chain, and manual door operation at International Foods in Raleigh to ensure that no immigration enforcement could enter the premises.
Among the non-profits, Siembra NC stands out in its organizing, attracting over six hundred volunteers in just one night, including those willing to track, monitor, and even blow whistles to alert nearby illegal immigrants to active ICE or CBP operations. Other organizations mentioned in local reporting as being involved or offering relevant services include
Brava NC
Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Raleigh
Council on Immigrant Relations
Durham Public School Strong
Durham For All
Education Justice Alliance
El Centro Hispano
El Pueblo
JusticeMatters, Inc.
Legal Aid of North Carolina
North Carolina Association of Educators
North Carolina Association for Immigrants
Pullen Memorial Baptist Church
Ready the Ground Training Team
U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants - NC
Protest Watch
The local protests regarding CBP operations in North Carolina began even before their deployment to the Triangle, with two protests in Raleigh last Sunday (November 16), the first of which held on Capital Blvd. with a crowd of at least hundreds of protesters lining the highway between Summer Rd. and Old Wake Forest Rd.
On the same day, chapters of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Palestinian Youth Movement lead a crowd of hundreds of protesters from Moore Square in downtown Raleigh for an intersectional left-wing protest against immigration enforcement: “From Palestine to Raleigh, No Border Patrol.”
Just two days later, on Tuesday (November 18), the same organizers returned to Raleigh along with 50501 NC for an “emergency protest,” attracting a crowd of up to a thousand to protest for “No Border Patrol in Raleigh.”
PSL also joined anarchists in leading a march of at least hundreds in Durham the next night as well (November 19) in a demonstration promoted by the antifa-linked “Triangle Radical Events.” Messaging at these three PSL followed the same radical leftist/anarchist line, including “Abolish ICE,” “F--- ICE,” and “No Human is Illegal.” Some messages were even projected onto surrounding buildings, including one reading “ICE Must Go. Borders Must Go. Citizenship Must Go. There is Only One World & Borders Are Destroying It.”
Although mid-year anti-ICE or anti-Trump protests organized by PSL or slightly less radical organizations had leaned towards bringing more American flags, for optical reasons, the protests of the previous week seemed to veer more towards the style of the first immigration-related protests in the weeks after Trump’s inauguration in any American flags were outnumbered by demonstrators proudly flying the flags of their native countries of Mexico, Ecuador, Argentina, etc.
The widespread outrage on the left from the raids inspired smaller protests as well, including one in Cary with over a hundred participants on Wednesday (November 19), a protest at NC State University, another highway-lining protest in Raleigh, as well as a protest/press conference at Duke by participants associated with Durham Rising, Siembra NC, North Carolina Association of Educators, and the Duke Grad Students Union.
Another smaller, but perhaps more controversial antifa/anarchist protest was held on Friday (November 21) outside what leftists have identified as an ICE field office in Cary, with approximately 50 attendees according to the News & Observer.
Student walk-outs protest immigration enforcement
Durham students protest Border Patrol, ICE activity as threat to education - N&O
Students at 2 Wake high schools walk out to protest Border Patrol operations - N&O
Wakefield High School students hold walkout to protest federal immigration crackdown - ABC11
Students in Wake, Durham counties plan walkouts over ICE raids - ABC11
In addition to the protests by the general public, a number of walkout protests by students were documented at local public schools including
Durham Public Schools: Brodgen Middle School, Durham School of the Arts, Hillside High School (2), and Jordan High School
Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools: East Chapel Hill High School
Wake County Public School System: Apex High School, Felton Grove High School, Heritage High School, Rolesville High School (2), Wakefield High School, and Wake Forest High School
Some of these protests matched the more radical elements such as chanting “F--- ICE” (and throwing a chair) at Rolesville High School, as well as touting various foreign flags and demanding “justice” for immigration enforcement. Students at Rolesville High and Hillside High were so enthusiastic about the cause (or skipping school, for the cynical) that they protested twice in the same week.
