New federal data brings more evidence that immigration enforcement agents are not primarily targeting people with violent criminal records, despite recent messaging from the Department of Homeland Security.
When Border Patrol agents rolled into Charlotte in November, an agency press release painted North Carolina as a “sanctuary” for immigrants without legal status, announcing agents came to “target criminal illegal aliens terrorizing Americans.”
But in the three months leading up to that, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in North Carolina arrested an increasing number of people with no criminal records, while picking up a declining number of people with convictions or pending charges.
Most of the arrests driving that disparity happened in Mecklenburg County, where in September about 67% of the 100-plus arrests involved people who hadn’t been convicted of crimes or faced charges, according to a Charlotte Observer analysis of federal data recently released by the U.C. Berkeley-based Deportation Data Project…