The Border Patrol (CBP) operation in Charlotte, North Carolina, launched on Saturday by the Administration to increase migrant arrests, has ended. The deployment of troops in the state’s most populous city lasted less than a week, leaving a toll of over 250 prisoners (275 according to some sources).
Federal officials confirmed this Thursday to sheriff of Mecklenburg County, Garry McFadden, that the so-called “Operation Charlotte’s Web“(Charlotte’s Web) had officially ended, the AP office reported sheriff.
Charlotte was the latest phase of Republican President Donald Trump’s aggressive mass deportation efforts, who sent military and immigration agents into Democratic-run cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles. The next stop should be New Orleans, where the operation will take place Swamp garbage (Swamp Sweep) will have the same goal: retain migrants from adding to the deportation list, which falls well short of the president’s goal of one million annual deportations. Up to 250 federal troops could arrive this Friday for the operation, which is expected to begin in early December.
Immigration agents are also expected to arrive in New York after the border czar, Tom Homan, announced on Tuesday on the Fox television network.
Agent raids in Charlotte, led by controversial CBP chief Gregory Bovino, have spread fear throughout the city of 950,000. Fear of the officers has led many businesses to close their doors to avoid clashes between their customers and officials. Furthermore, there were numerous absences from schools for fear that parents would be arrested if they took their minors with them.
Bovino’s tactics have been widely criticized for excessive violence, but supported by the government, which advocates greater aggression than that already used by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) in Trump’s anti-immigration crusade.
On Tuesday the offensive expanded to areas surrounding Raleigh, the capital of North Carolina, where agents were spotted in a suburb where nearly 20% of the population is immigrants.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials justified police intervention in the state by the lack of cooperation between local authorities and immigration agents in so-called sanctuary cities.
Charlotte’s operation sparked resistance and protests. About a hundred people gathered Wednesday outside a Home Depot store, one of the places where federal agents have gone several times to arrest residents.
Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles, a Democrat, said Thursday she was glad the police operation was apparently over. “I am relieved for our community and for the residents, businesses and all who have been targeted and affected by this intrusion,” Lyles wrote in
The actions of CBP troops in Chicago, the city where they had previously been deployed, anticipated the fear of their arrival in Charlotte. In the Illinois city, the officers’ operation left evidence of excessive use of force and the use of chemical weapons, such as pepper bullets and tear gas, against the population.
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein said he accused Border Patrol agents of “stoking fear” and using racial profiling in arrests, arresting people “because of the color of their skin.”
