Charlotte ICE Official Defends Controversial Arrests, Tactics: ‘People Are Defiant’

The official leading Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Charlotte denied that the agency racially profiles people.

“Our job is to enforce immigration law, and we do it very humanely,” Assistant Field Office Director Maria Somers told The Charlotte Observer and Enlace Latino in an interview last week.

Since President Donald Trump returned to the White House in January and launched a mass deportation campaign, ICE has been more active in Charlotte. Increasingly public arrests have led to anguish and backlash.

Churches, a parent-teacher association, an immigrant advocacy group and others have accused the agency of violating people’s rights and creating dysfunction. Throughout the Observer’s and Enlace Latino’s hour-long conversation with Somers, she frequently redirected public criticism of ICE.

“People are very defiant,” she said of arrestees.

ICE has no public data showing how many people have been arrested in just North Carolina since January, but more than 28,000 have been arrested across both Carolinas and Georgia.

Courthouse arrests

In the spring, ICE drew ire when its agents arrested four men outside the Mecklenburg County courthouse.

Sheriff Garry McFadden confronted the agents and publicly called on ICE to work with his office going forward. Local attorneys worried that making arrests in such a public place could be dangerous.

“We know that they’ve already cleared security, and the likelihood of them having a weapon or something like that is not there,” Somers said of arresting people leaving court. “It’s an officer safety situation.”

ICE does “notify the locals when we’re present and making an arrest,” she added.

A spokesperson for Sheriff Garry McFadden said Friday that he, the sheriff’s office’s public information officer, courthouse staff and communications staff have “never been notified by ICE of any activity in and around the courthouse.” The sheriff’s office oversees that building.

Arrests at a different courthouse, Charlotte’s immigration court, have also raised concerns.

In June, the Observer reported how ICE attorneys have been dismissing immigrants’ cases and seemingly letting them leave – only for federal agents to arrest them and place them into expedited removal proceedings. That’s a fast-track to deportation.

One immigration attorney called it “playing dirty.”

Those people are targeted cases, Somers said, and they never should have been allowed to go to immigration court in the first place.

“The correct method for that person, based on the way they entered, should have been expedited removal,” Somers said. “We are actually just correcting and rectifying the way their case should have been addressed.”

Expedited removal proceedings previously applied only to people who were found by border agents within a certain distance of a border. But in January, Trump significantly broadened when that process could be used.

Somers pointed to the large backlog in immigration court. Immigration court, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and the larger immigration system are underresourced, she said. She believed Trump’s domestic policy bill recently passed by Congress would help.

Why agents are wearing masks

Some federal lawmakers want to bar ICE agents from wearing face coverings.

In Charlotte, agents are wearing masks to protect themselves after doxxing incidents, Somers said.

“To minimize some of that… We do have to cover ourselves to protect ourselves,” she said. “Usually, after we identify ourselves and make the arrest, that’s when the officers put their masks on. Everyone starts recording. You know, people are emotional about how they feel about the situation…We get a lot of backlash from the community.”

The agency wants people doing the doxxing prosecuted, she said.

“Our officers are being attacked, or it’s encouraged for them to be attacked,” she said.

Written by Ryan Oehrli