As Border Patrol comes to Raleigh, where are the GOP lawmakers who cheered crackdowns? | Opinion

For years, Republican state lawmakers have spoken in the General Assembly about cracking down on undocumented immigrants.

Now, their words have become actions in the capital city.

Federal agents were expected to come to Raleigh on Tuesday to round up people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally. The sweep follows similar actions by the U.S. Border Patrol in Charlotte, where more than 130 people were arrested over the weekend. The raids mark a wider move into the South after federal agents targeted immigrants in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other Democrat-run cities.

Now it’s Raleigh’s turn to see masked agents arresting people, often based on racial profiling. The sudden enforcement actions disrupt communities. Businesses close, workers stay home, children don’t go to school, U.S. citizens are sometimes wrongly detained and families are torn apart. Sympathetic local residents take videos of the arrests and local law enforcement is caught between the rough roundup and protecting people.

Now that this mayhem has come to the capital’s doorstep, where are the Republican lawmakers who bellowed about the people they prefer to label “illegals”?

It was popular with the MAGA base to echo President Donald Trump’s ranting against criminal illegal aliens, but now that parents, neighbors and workers in North Carolina – most without any criminal record – are being caught in roundups, it’s not so popular.

Trump said he would deport the “worst of the worst,” but his crackdown is targeting any potentially undocumented person federal officers can find. Polls show most Americans do not support the arrest and deportation of non-criminals. And even some supporters of deporting all undocumented people are put off by the sight of heavily armed officers rounding up laborers and parents.

Michael Whatley, the former state and national GOP leader now seeking his party’s 2026 U.S. Senate nomination, apparently doesn’t know how unpopular these federal sweeps are among independent voters who will be key in the Senate race. He said the actions over the weekend took “criminal illegal aliens identified as murderers, rapists, and pedophiles off the streets of Charlotte.” But reviews of immigrants arrested in enforcement actions elsewhere show that most do not have criminal records.

Former Gov. Roy Cooper, the likely Democratic nominee for the Senate, has it right. He said in a statement that “randomly sweeping up people based on what they look like, including American citizens and those with no criminal records, risks leaving violent criminals at large while hurting families and the economy.”

These sweeps disrupt cities with the intent of scaring people from coming into the United States illegally and pressuring undocumented immigrants who are already here to leave. But the approach is more show than solution. Recent estimates put the number of undocumented people living in North Carolina at more than 425,000. As a practical matter, they can’t all be deported. And if they were, the state’s economy – particularly its construction, hospitality and agricultural sectors – would suffer. And that would cost all North Carolinians.

Instead, Trump’s roundups are creating chaos and fear, trampling due process rights and denying the nation’s long and proud history of welcoming immigrants to a nation of immigrants.

Veronica Aguilar, communications director for the Triangle’s Latino advocacy group El Pueblo, said in a statement: “These are moments that will imprint in the memories of our society for years to come and seed distrust in not only our law enforcement, but our government leaders who allow the reckless operations of federal immigration agents to continue in our backyards.”

Republican lawmakers enjoy using “illegal aliens” for political pandering to citizens’ fears or nativist views. Most recently, they overrode Stein’s veto of their “Criminal Illegal Alien Enforcement Act.” The new law allows local sheriffs to hold undocumented people beyond when they would normally be entitled to be released. Republicans also supported Senate Bill 153, which requires sheriffs to cooperate with ICE and bars state benefits for undocumented immigrants.

Now, getting tough on undocumented people is more than talk in the legislative chambers. It’s punishing and frightening real people, many of whom want legal status but are unable to obtain it because of the nation’s Byzantine and broken immigration system.

Most of the public doesn’t support that. Neither should Republican lawmakers.

Associate opinion editor Ned Barnett can be reached at 9919-404-7583, or nbarnett@newsobserver.com

This story was originally published November 18, 2025 at 11:47 AM.