Siler City or Ciudad Siler? Immigration enforcement and media coverage | State Senator's state fair DWI | CHCCS board on the hook for defying Parents' Bill of Rights?
No. 147 — Oct. 19-Oct. 25, 2025
Media coverage sympathizes with illegal immigrants
The Trump administration is making good on its promise to increase immigration enforcement, with data showing an approximate 2.6x increase in immigration arrests in North Carolina during the first six months of 2025, as compared to the previous year.
However, even with this increase, immigration arrests are a drop in the bucket compared to the massive number of illegal immigrants present in our state; with a maximum of only 467 monthly arrests (in May), it could take eight decades to clear out the nearly half-a-million “unauthorized” population estimated to reside in North Carolina.
Beyond the mere number of illegal immigrants physically removed from our country, the administration’s policy of aggressively enforcing the immigration laws on the books is also serving to encourage “self-deportation,” in which illegal immigrants choose to leave the country of their own accord.
Although the scale of this remigration is more nebulous and harder to quantify than the public data of arrests, mainstream media has conveniently confirmed the phenomenon by running positive stories on the most sympathetic of the self-deporters.
Self-deportation
Mexican father, reflecting a trend, leaves family of 19 years and self-deports due to threat of arrest - ABC News
Facing possible detention or deportation, NC father leaves on his own terms - N&O
For example, the News & Observer and the national ABC News both ran recent stories on Fidel Rivera, a “husband and father” who has decided to return to his home country of Mexico due to the looming threat of our laws being enforced against him for the first time in his thirty years of residing and working in our country “without legal status.”
The lax enforcement of immigration laws allowed Rivera to work in the country for those decades, first as a farm worker before transitioning to construction and rising to the level of master electrician.
Rivera leaves behind two daughters and his wife, a Wake County teacher and advocate for illegal immigrants who married him nearly two decades ago with the mistaken belief that her citizenship would easily erase his illegal status.
Ciudad Siler
In Siler City, Fear of ICE Hangs Over Latino Community - The Assembly
Siler City, a town in western Chatham County, has also become the subject of sympathetic media coverage due to the “fear” in the mixed legal-and-illegal Hispanic community which currently makes up a majority of the town’s residents.
The majority-Hispanic population is not, of course, a reflection of any historic Hispanic presence in the area, but rather a relatively recent development as a result of the radical change to the American immigration policy in the 1965 Hart-Celler Act. (The first census with data on the Hispanic population recorded only 43,414 Hispanics in the entire state in 1970, a small fraction of the estimated 2024 population of 1,327,268).
The rapid immigration and demographic-driven cultural change in a relatively small town has previously been the subject of media attention, including an anti-immigration rally in 2000 and an NPR report in 2008, in which one non-Hispanic resident described the difficulty in communicating with the Spanish-speaking parents of her daughter’s soccer teammates.
It’s hard to describe this demographic change as anything other than “replacement,” when Hispanics make up a small proportion of the population 45 years or older, yet an ever increasing majority of each cohort under the age of eighteen.
The effect of immigration on the native population is naturally of no concern to the modern mainstream journalist, yet a recent profile in The Assembly of how the Siler City Hispanic community is grappling with having to obey federal law provides informative insight into the foreigners in the country illegally, as well as their interconnectedness and symbiosis with their relatives, countrymen, coethnics who do have some form of “legal” status as well as the protection and encouragement they receive from elected officials such as the Chatham County Sheriff.
One such example is a Salvadoran referred to as Gabriel S., who is in the country on “Temporary Protected Status” along with his sister, who was detained but ultimately released in an ICE raid on a Sanford gun manufacturer in 2019 which resulted in 25 arrests.
Although one might assume that the word “temporary” refers to a short period of time, El Salvador has received this ongoing designations due to earthquakes which occurred in 2001, three years after Gabriel S. arrived in North Carolina.
El Salvador’s TPS designation is currently set to expire in September 9, 2026 after it was granted an 18-month renewal just days before President Trump’s inauguration. Since the administration change, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has announced the termination of TPS status for Honduras, which had similarly been repeatedly renewed based on a hurricane in 1998.
Another interviewee described how his father, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, was arrested and detained after being caught driving without a license in 2017, but was ultimately released and given a green card despite his history of violating federal and state laws.
When given an opportunity to comment Chatham County Sheriff Mike Roberson to comment on the current legal climate, he encouraged unlicensed illegal immigrants to stay off the road, not because it is illegal, but because getting caught could “put[ them] in the system:”
Roberson said one of the best ways to steer clear of ICE is for people who are undocumented— and therefore unable to obtain a license—to avoid driving. Though this can be challenging in a largely rural county like Chatham, he said being ticketed or arrested for driving without a license “puts you in the system. That doesn’t mean you’re going to get a detainer on you, but now your name’s out there.”
— In Siler City, Fear of ICE Hangs Over Latino Community (The Assembly)
Previous Siler City/immigration coverage:
Pair charged with kidnapping 15-year-old from Siler City identified as illegal aliens (No. 114 — Mar. 8, 2025)
Kidnapping/grooming epidemic continues w/ registered sex offender accused of trafficking another underage girl in Siler City (No. 120 — Apr. 19, 2025)
Siler City Police employee caught running visa scam (No. 140 — Sep. 6, 2025)
State Senator arrested for DWI near state fair
‘Regrettable mistake’: NC senator charged with DWI in Raleigh had .16 BAC level - WRAL
Eastern NC lawmaker arrested and charged with driving while impaired in Raleigh - N&O
North Carolina senator arrested and charged with driving while impaired, court docs reveal - ABC11
Last Saturday night (October 18), a state senator from northeast North Carolina was arrested for drunk driving with a BAC of .16 after being pulled over for “failing to follow traffic direction” near the state fair.
Norman Sanderson, 74, was charged with driving while impaired, having an open container of alcohol, and failing to obey a traffic officer.
Sanderson, a Republican, is on his seventh term representing District 1 which contains Carteret, Chowan, Halifax, Hyde, Martin, Pamlico, Warren and Washington counties.
Sanderson released the following statement via the NC Senate Republican Caucus:
Last night I made a regrettable mistake, and I take responsibility for my actions. I want to apologize to my constituents, my colleagues, and my family for letting them down. I commend the State Highway Patrol and the Wake County Sheriff’s Office for their professionalism during the incident.
Orange County school boards still defying Parents’ Bill of Rights
Did NC school district ‘defy’ Parents’ Bill of Rights? House leader seeks answers - N&O
Libs of TikTok EXPOSES North Carolina School for Defying State Law - Libs of TikTok
The Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Board of Education’s open defiance of the Parents’ Bill of Rights has drawn renewed attention after the board’s chair, George Griffin, brought up the subject in a recent candidate forum ahead of his upcoming reelection, claiming that the CHCCS board was the “only school district in North Carolina” to defy the Parents’ Bill of Rights passed by the legislature in 2023.
As reported at the time, the board refused to pass a policy implementing two elements of the law, the requirement schools notify parents “prior to any changes in the name or pronoun used for a student in school records or by school personnel” and the prohibition on instruction about sex or “gender identity” for K-4 students.
Although then-superintendent Catherine Truitt responded to the news with a declaration that the district “may not break the laws you don’t like,” it appears that her department took no legal action against the district prior to her defeat in the 2024 Republican primary and the ultimate succession of Democrat Maurice “Mo” Green to the office.
No. Sorry. You may not break the laws you don’t like – even in Chapel Hill. I worked with the legislature to pass the Parents Bill of Rights to protect children and empower parents and it’s unacceptable for Chapel Hill or anyone else to ignore it. #ncga #ncpol #nced https://t.co/Jow5nIUcyF
— Catherine Truitt (@CTruittNC) January 20, 2024
However, in response to a viral post by Chaya Raichik aka @libsoftiktok on Twitter/X, House Majority Leader Brenden Jones (R-Columbus, Robeson) announced that his office would be “actively investigating” the district over the issue and suggesting that Griffin should be “ready to testify before the House” over the defiance.
According to Chapel Hill and Carrboro’s School Board, state law doesn’t apply to them.
All I have to say is…George Griffin and CHCCS, be ready to testify before the House to explain why you think you can openly defy state law. #ncpol https://t.co/T6pljgXJsx
— Rep. Brenden Jones (@BrendenJonesNC) October 23, 2025
My office is actively investigating Chapel Hill–Carrboro City Schools for their continuous disregard of state law.
If you have relevant information that could assist our investigation, please share it using the link below. #ncpol
Link: https://t.co/cRDUflR3CE https://t.co/sSiDfK3u13
— Rep. Brenden Jones (@BrendenJonesNC) October 24, 2025
Griffin’s prioritizing the LGBTQ agenda over following state law and keeping parents informed may be offensive to many across the state and the country, it is apparently popular enough in the second most Democrat-leaning county in the state: Griffin and fellow board member Riza Jenkins are both running unopposed in next months election.
Although Griffin claimed that his district was the only one that “stood up to the General Assembly,” there appears to be evidence that Orange County Schools (the county’s other school district) is also out of compliance with the Parents’ Bill of Rights, though perhaps not so brazenly:
you hit the nail with unopposed. Five candidates for four positions in town council https://orangecountync.gov/DocumentCenter/View/34749/Orange-20251104-SAMPLE-E-0003_V?bidId=