How Border Patrol raids changed the N.C. political landscape
'Shock and awe' operations are bad politics — but they made deporting violent offenders a consensus issue and set the stage for serious labor enforcement.
All anybody in North Carolina has talked about this week is the Border Patrol operations in Charlotte and Raleigh.
I’ve already written quite a bit about it. My first newspaper column laid out why I don’t like masked agents and unmarked vans on our streets.
The second makes the case that immigration enforcement, including deportation, is necessary and actually moral. You can read it here, free with gift link: Border Patrol leaves Charlotte, but hard reality remains: We need deportations
This is an emotional issue, and it should be. In general, my position is in line with Pope Leo XIV, who said that every country has a right to control its borders, but must still treat migrants humanely and with the dignity they possess, through courts and a real system of justice rather than cruelty or spectacle.
For this newsletter, though, I want to set the emotion off to the side and look only at the political and the policy implications for North Carolina specifically. Obviously, most of the change needs to happen at the federal level, but that’s not an arena that I spend much time on.
Here are my three main takeaways.
1. Smash-and-grab raids are a political loser
The way these operations played out is simply bad politics.
People are generally fine with dramatic raids when you’re talking about hardened violent criminals. They are not fine with the same tactics used on landscapers and housekeepers. It’s impossible to defend visuals of agents in full battle regalia fanning out through Home Depot parking lots smashing in car windows.
The Trump administration clearly enjoys the spectacle, leaning into it with dramatic videos on social media. Liberals online like to say “the cruelty is the point,” and in this case it’s hard to disagree.
Immigration should be a winning issue for border hawks, but the more that enforcement looks like a show of dominance rather than a matter of public safety, the harder it is to build durable support for any kind of enforcement at all.
2. The ICE cooperation debate is over. Now strengthen the law
After last week, there’s no longer a real debate in North Carolina over whether violent criminal illegal aliens should be deported.
Before these operations, the de facto position on the left was “don’t deport anyone.” Big-city sheriffs campaigned on refusing to cooperate with ICE. Now that’s a non-starter. Gov. Josh Stein vetoed a bill to require sheriffs to honor federal detainers on people accused of serious crimes, but now he’s advocating for doing exactly that.
It’s actually a huge shift in the Overton window, and one that the General Assembly should take advantage of.
First, it creates a political opportunity to broaden and strengthen Speaker Destin Hall’s ICE bill. As written, the law requires sheriffs to cooperate with ICE in only a narrow band of serious cases.
The stronger version would require an immigration status determination and ICE notification for every arrest and give local police departments more tools to determine whether people they arrest are in the country illegally.
In fact, building on the direction of Iryna’s Law, it could even go so far as to create a presumption against bail — or simply no bail at all — for defendants charged with violent crimes who are in the country illegally.
The basic question of whether North Carolina will deport violent criminal illegal aliens is settled. The only live question now is how serious we are about making that system work, and where Stein stands on that.
3. Labor enforcement has to be the primary tool
The third piece is where the long-term solution lives: the labor market. If you want fewer sweeps, you have to go after the business model that makes illegal immigration attractive in the first place.
North Carolina has a relatively weak employer verification law. Only businesses with 25 or more employees are required to use E-Verify to confirm that new hires are eligible to work. The N.C. Department of Labor is responsible for enforcing that law and can investigate complaints, subpoena records, hold hearings, and impose meaningful penalties.
In practice, though, enforcement looks anemic. There apparently have been only five E-Verify enforcement actions since 2017, or at least that’s all that’s been made public.
I’ve been genuinely impressed with first-year Labor Commissioner Luke Farley, and I think he could do a good job on this if he had more resources. I reached out to NCDOL and got this statement:
“NCDOL investigates all E-Verify complaints. Failure to follow the E-Verify law hurts both North Carolina workers and responsible businesses who are following the law. Commissioner Farley is committed to enforcing these laws to protect workers, ensure fair competition, and maintain lawful workplaces.”
That’s fine as far as it goes. But I did not get answers to three basic questions:
How many people does NCDOL actually have enforcing these laws?
Are there any random inspections, or is it solely complaint-based?
Does the department have adequate resources to do more than react to the occasional complaint?
Those are the right questions for the General Assembly to figure out and fix.
If we’re serious, the primary enforcement mechanism for illegal immigration in North Carolina needs to be labor enforcement — expanding E-Verify to all companies, tightening loopholes and exceptions, and giving Farley the staff and statutory backing to make noncompliance genuinely risky for employers hiring illegal labor.
That’s how you make it far less likely that North Carolina is ever again the stage for a week of shock-and-awe immigration raids.
At a premium
Question of the week
Last week, I asked you what you’d like to see Dave Boliek’s office audit next. Coincidentally, Medicaid was one of the options and the Office of the State Auditor did just drop a look into how N.C. Department of Health and Human Services has used some administrative sleight of hand in its budget.
But anyway, that wasn’t the No. 1 thing you wanted audited first. That goes to SNAP benefits, at 36%.