Latest news with #CarolinaMigrantNetwork
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Group says increase of ICE arrests in Charlotte is leading to more calls for help
The Carolina Migrant Network says they've received a big influx of calls after a recent ICE operation in the Charlotte area. The group says they've received 133 calls in just the past week. That's compared to them getting five to 10 calls during a normal week. Dozens of people attended a conference on Monday to speak out against ICE arrests, including Stefania Arteaga, the co-founder of the Carolina Migrant Network. 'What is happening is harassment, it's an attack, and it's absolutely violent at every level,' Arteaga said. 'We know that community members are scared to take their kids to school, go to the grocery store, to do everything we take for granted ... we've seen detentions in close proximity to schools, not just one, but a couple.' Last week, Channel 9 heard from parents at Charlotte East Language Academy upset about a video they say shows an arrest near the school drop-off line. PREVIOUS STORIES: PTA says student's parent was detained near school in east Charlotte ICE releases information on arrest made near east Charlotte school drop-off line Man accused of threatening to kill CMPD, ICE officers, referencing deadly Charlotte ambush The daughters of Jose Martinez Hernandez spoke out of Monday and said ICE arrested him last week on his way to a construction job. She says she now has to work in construction to support her 10 brothers and sisters. "For the first time in my life, I saw my father cry. The man who had always been our rock, our provider, was reduced to tears -- and it shattered our hearts," Joanna Martinez said. Carolina Migrant Networks says the issue affects all Charlotteans, not just immigrants who are here illegally. 'We don't feel safe when unmarked vehicles with undercover agents who do not state who they are are stopping our neighbors,' Arteaga said. Channel 9 has repeatedly asked ICE for information about the arrests near the language academy, but we've not gotten clear answers. We're also asking about Hernandez's arrest, how many arrests ICE has made in Charlotte over the past week, and whether the perception of the uptick is real. We'll bring you an update when we hear back. (VIDEO: ICE releases information on arrest made near east Charlotte school drop-off line)
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
‘Ready to fight like hell.' Anti-Trump Charlotte protesters march for immigrant rights
Protesters marched through the heart of Charlotte's immigrant community on Saturday to denounce what they called the Trump administration's illegal and unwarranted deportations and anti-union, anti-worker policies and actions. Police estimated the crowd of marchers on Central Avenue in east Charlotte at 1,500. The Charlotte-Metrolina Labor Council, Action NC, Carolina Migrant Network and other community groups held the event to celebrate International Workers' Day. 'I'm out here because I'm disgusted with what's happening in our country, what Trump is doing, and this is only the second protest I've been to in my life,' Susan Ward of Charlotte said as she and other early arriving protesters received occasional honks of support from drivers. 'The last one was a few weeks ago.' Ward, 75, displayed a handmade sign that read 'Dump Trump' on one side and 'Justice for All' on the other. 'All the lies,' she said. 'They're taking all our rights from us,' mentioning people being 'taken away who are citizens, or anybody, without due process. I hope we can dump him.' The event followed other protests in the region, including a rally and march by Lake Norman Indivisible in Davidson on Thursday. 'I'm here to be with all the workers internationally,' Angel Orellana, a 20-year-old Charlottean of Mexican and Salvadoran descent said. 'This is what the movement's for. The struggle is always going to be the same, no matter where we are, whether it's Mexico, El Salvador, here in the U.S. or in Palestine.' Ryan Christiano held a poster that read, 'We are the 99 Percent.' She is in her early 20s and from the Lake Norman area, she said. Lower- and middle-class workers hold the majority of political power, she said. 'Elected officials are supposed to work for us, and the 1% shouldn't be hoarding all the wealth at the top of the pyramid and refusing to redistribute it down so everybody else doesn't have to suffer,' Christiano said 'It's we the people,' her uncle Paul Nowosielski of Wingate said. 'It's as simple as that.' U.S. Rep. Alma Adams, D-Charlotte, drew repeated applause as she addressed the crowd outside La Coalición (Latin American Coalition) on Central Avenue before the march. 'I support you, because immigrants' rights are workers' rights,' Adams said. 'Our immigrant communities are a bedrock of the city of Charlotte, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina and the country.' Immigrants are 'job creators and business owners,' she said, including at least 16% of business owners in Mecklenburg County. She said they've delivered thousands of new jobs to the region and more than a billion dollars a year in tax revenue. 'Without immigrants there would be no United Sates of America,' Adams said . She cited pro-immigrant, pro-worker legislation she's sponsored and criticized Trump for his actions against both groups. 'The power of our government does not come from one man's ego,' Adams said. 'It comes from the people, and the people are ready to fight like hell. So listen, as you march today, march with your heads high, march with your signs raised and march with your voices loud.' 'This is a movement to be proud of, and you will always have an ally in me,' Adams said before the crowd marched peacefully and chanted loudly, as an overhead police drone and scores of officers on bicycles monitored the two-hour event.
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Yahoo
Sheriff McFadden: ICE makes arrest outside Mecklenburg County Courthouse
Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden says he witnessed ICE make an arrest outside the Mecklenburg County Courthouse on Wednesday. According to Sheriff McFadden, the agents were in plain clothes and in an unmarked car. He does not know the identity of the person arrested or if that person had business at the court. A spokesperson for ICE said more information will be released later. 'I don't think I was that surprised, because we know it is going to happen,' McFadden said. 'It's going to continue to occur.' RELATED STORIES: Mecklenburg County Sheriff discusses impact of HB10 Mecklenburg County Sheriff calls for collaboration and transparency with ICE Sheriff McFadden says ICE failed to pick up 163 undocumented people from jail ICE, partner agencies arrest 24 people in Charlotte operation McFadden says he is now creating a policy for future arrests on courthouse property. He says he gave his personal cell phone number to arresting agents and asked to be contacted next time so court business isn't disrupted. 'We are just looking for collaboration, conversation, and cooperation,' Sheriff McFadden said. 'We just don't want anybody to be hurt. We don't want anything to happen to anyone and we're just concerned.' As Channel 9 has been reporting, ICE says McFadden isn't cooperating with the agency's detainer requests. While inmates flagged by ICE are held for 48 hours, ICE says Sheriff McFadden isn't calling the agency before they are released. McFadden says the law doesn't require him to. Stefanía Arteaga with the Carolina Migrant Network says she is worried the arrest will make people less comfortable going to court. 'We have to remember that Mecklenburg County court isn't just to criminal charges,' she said. 'We have small claims court. We have people who are trying to get married within the court. It will have an impact on the community if community members do not feel safe accessing the court system.' This is a developing story. Watch Channel 9 for updates. (VIDEO: Vape shop employee shoots at fleeing robbers in Lincolnton, sheriff says)
Yahoo
15-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
"He's just disappeared": What it's like to be detained by ICE — and why some prefer to be deported
With stories of deportations to El Salvadoran prisons and in secret middle-of-the-night flights dominating headlines, advocates warn that detention in American immigration facilities is a harrowing punishment in itself and one that looms large over many residents of the United States as President Donald Trump's administration has ramped up its deportation campaign. Stefania Artega, a co-founder of the Carolina Migrant Network, helps operate a hotline that people in North Carolina and South Carolina can call to report sightings of immigration enforcement in their communities, as well as to access legal resources. She told Salon that recently some have begun calling to report emergencies — before calling the police — because they're scared that any contact with law enforcement might lead to ICE agents knocking on their door. 'Early on, we got a call from somebody who was hiding in the bathroom from an abusive partner and was unsure if she could call 911 and called our hotline instead,' Artega said. Fear of calling the police isn't the only effect of Trump and the Republicans' deportation campaign. Artega told Salon that, in the communities she works with, children are staying home from school and parents are staying home from work because of fear of ICE and what it could mean for them and their families if they're detained. Becca O'Neil, an immigration attorney and co-founder of the Carolina Migrant Network, described a system where detainees enjoy fewer rights than criminal defendants and one characterized by uncertainty. She regularly visits the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, one of the largest detention centers in the United States, where she said detainees regularly get stuck for years. Immigrants are typically held in a county jail or a different partner facility before being transferred to a longer-term facility, like Stewart. 'These are people who are being held purely on immigration charges, and 'charges' is not even a good work for it. These are simple violations. Nobody's there on criminal charges,' O'Neil said. Stewart is a private prison operated by CoreCivic, a for-profit corporation that makes money off detained immigrants, most of whom have no legal counsel. Unlike in criminal court, immigration courts are not required to provide detainees with an attorney. O'Neil said that navigating this system without a counsel can be confusing and difficult, an issue that is compounded for detainees who don't speak English, Spanish or another language for which an interpreter is readily available. O'Neil said she knew of one detainee who was kept in Stewart for 900 days while his wife and child were allowed to apply for asylum and live in North Carolina. He later won his case. However, when the government appealed his legal victory, he was forced to stay in jail throughout the appeal; about a year after his initial legal victory, he was still in detention as the appeal was pending. O'Neil said that the best immediate outcome that people who are detained by ICE can typically hope for is to be released on bond. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which keeps detailed data on immigration proceedings, only about 31% of detainees are released on bond. These rates also vary dramatically based on national origin, with about half of Turkish detainees being released on bond, while just 16% of detainees from the Dominican Republic are released. Marcela Hernandez, director of organizing and membership at the Detention Watch Network, told Salon that for some detainees who are unable to be released on bond, deportation is preferable to the treatment they receive in detention centers. 'In talking with people inside or supporting people that have been released, folks have reported that there's a lot of medical neglect and overcrowding. Also, when people are trying to organize to get medical support, such as seeing a nurse because they're feeling bad or have a life-threatening condition, or for better food since it's really bad, they have been met with a lot of violence including the use of pepper spray, rubber bullets, beatings and sent to solidarity confinement,' Hernandez said. At Irwin County Detention Center in Georgia, detainees were alleged to have been pressured to undergo unneeded procedures like hysterectomies under the first Trump administration. Hernandez said that when detainees attempt to advocate for their rights, they are sometimes transferred to other facilities. The Detention Watch Network has compiled reports detailing alleged abuses at different detention facilities, like the use of tear gas as punishment for perceived 'insubordination,' and the myriad health problems that plague detention centers. One Virginia facility, for example, experienced a mumps outbreak in 2019, which the organization says was exacerbated by unsafe and overcrowded conditions. 'We have people that are just enduring the horrible conditions detention to the point where some folks say, 'I prefer to be deported than to be in these abuses in a detention center.' Detention serves as a key piece of the deportation systems and is designed to be abusive so people are discouraged from fighting for their case and rights,' Hernandez said. At the same time, it's often difficult for the families of those detained to even figure out where their loved ones are being kept. Matt Cameron, a Massachusetts immigration attorney, told Salon that it's easier to track a package in the mail than to locate a detained family member. 'I think most people would be surprised to learn that you can't even get anywhere near the basic level of tracking that you could get if you ordered a pair of shoes on Zappos right now, on a human being in the ICE system,' Cameron said. Cameron said that he recently had a client who was facing a bond hearing on a Monday and disappeared over the preceding weekend. He said he'd talked to several ICE officers and 'no one seemed particularly concerned about he fact that they don't know where he is and that they don't know where he's going.' 'He's just disappeared, and this has been happening a lot. I'm sure you've seen stories. There's always been chaos built into the system, but this is something else,' Cameron said. 'There is a detainee locator that you can use online, and if you're wire somebody's details, but that's pretty much functionally useless at this point because they haven't been updating it, and it's always been 24 to 48 hours behind.' Cameron said that, compared to criminal custody, immigration detention has a lot less certainty for those who are detained. Cameron recounted a story of a client from a Southeast Asian country who was suffering from dementia and held for years, in part because he couldn't afford legal counsel. 'He didn't know what was going on. He was going in and out of dementia and no one was doing anything about his situation. He was just showing up to the immigration judge, and the judge was trying to do his best to explain his rights and help him through these proceedings. But without a lawyer, especially if you don't know what's going on, it's really hard to know what to do, and I worry there are people like that getting lost in the system all the time, especially now, when we're being so careless about everything,' Cameron said. Frankie Miranda, president and CEO of the Hispanic Federation, a nonprofit advocacy group, told Salon that the threat of both deportation and detention is hanging over the Hispanic community in the United States. He noted that it's not just immigrant communities that are affected, citing reports of Puerto Ricans being targeted by ICE. 'First of all, I can tell you that I have family members and people I know that are concerned and are walking around with their passports because they're concerned that the way they look and the language they're speaking in public will be cause for them to be detained,' Miranda said. In response to a request for comment from Salon, an ICE spokesperson said: "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement law enforcement activities are not conducted based on racial or ethnic profiling. The Department of Homeland Security takes all allegations of racial or ethnic profiling very seriously." "ICE's law enforcement actions are taken consistent with DHS and ICE policies, as well as U.S. immigration law, which prohibit the consideration of race or ethnicity when conducting enforcement actions," the spokesperson continued. "Instead, ICE relies on data-driven, fact-based intelligence to identify, arrest and remove criminal aliens from the United States. All aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States, regardless of nationality." Miranda explained that he's worried that information that immigrants have given to the government in other contexts, like when paying taxes, may be used against them. The IRS, for example, has agreed to share the taxpayer information of immigrants with the Department of Homeland Security. Some documented immigrants, Miranda said, have expressed guilt because they've 'provided an enormous amount of information to the government and they feel that they have put their families at risk.' 'Instead of providing resources to clear the backlog, what they have been doing is taking resources away from trusted partners in communities and investing millions of dollars in a campaign to terrorize communities,' Miranda said.
