CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Almost as quickly as they descended on Charlotte, sending terror coursing through the city's immigrant neighborhoods, the Border Patrol agents appeared mostly to be gone. After a weeklong enforcement surge in which the government said agents arrested hundreds of immigrants, nabbing many as they went about their daily lives, the Border Patrol set its sights on its next target, New Orleans.
But as Charlotte's immigrant communities regroup from what felt like a whiplash operation last month, they're finding that its impacts on their lives and their city have endured, and could last a long time.
"It's like a hurricane came through," said Stephanie Sneed, chair of the Board of Education overseeing Charlotte's public school system, "and then we have to deal with the aftermath, which is much longer than the event itself."
During the week in mid-November that the Border Patrol was roaming Charlotte, about 20 percent of its public school children stayed home from classes. Attendance started bouncing back the week after the agents left, but Sneed said teachers had reported some Latino children arriving at school with notes pinned to their backpacks reading: "I am a citizen."
"I would never think that's something I would see," Sneed said.
Here are some other ways the Border Patrol's week aggressively enforcing the Trump administration's immigration agenda in Charlotte has reshaped parts of the city.
"This avenue was always packed"
Central Avenue has always been a bustling pedestrian corridor. It runs through the heart of East Charlotte's immigrant neighborhoods.
"This avenue was always packed, all the time," said Manolo Betancur, a Colombian immigrant and U.S. citizen who owns a popular Latino bakery on the street. Saturdays and Sundays were especially crowded with families walking to grocery stores, restaurants, and the laundromat, he said.
On the morning that Border Patrol arrived, Betancur was himself walking to work at his bakery – his passport in his pocket – when an SUV zoomed past and stopped half a block ahead of him. Several federal agents jumped out, he said, tackled three men, zip-tied their hands and hauled them away. Betancur turned around in a panic and alerted several families who were farther down the block walking in his direction.
"I told them, 'they're here! They're here! Go back to your houses!', and everybody started running back to their houses." Betancur and many others shuttered their businesses. He didn't want his customers risking their freedom to pick up a birthday cake. He's since reopened, but others have not. Weeks later, the sidewalks of Central Avenue are still uncharacteristically quiet.
Hiding from immigration agents in the woods
R, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras who asked to be identified by her first initial, lives in an apartment complex in East Charlotte that is home to many immigrants. She said Border Patrol agents twice knocked on her door during their operation in the city. She cares for children while their parents are at work. Most of her clients stopped bringing their kids, but on a recent day she was still caring for two.
A routine part of her job – walking them to school – suddenly posed a terrifying risk. She stopped using the sidewalk. Instead, she used a machete to clear brush and cut a path through the woods behind her apartment complex. "They won't find me in there," she said, "and if they do, I'll run."
Another undocumented woman in hiding, E, said she doesn't believe the Border Patrol agents have actually left, especially since federal officials have insisted enforcement will continue.
"They're waiting for us to go outside," E said, "so they can hunt us like a cat hunts a mouse."
Delivering groceries to people in hiding
Many immigrants in hiding have relied on allies to help with basic services like delivering food and medicine. Volunteers have set up a support network. People deliver supplies, take reports of vehicles suspected of belonging to immigration agents and go check them out, and wear bright yellow vests while they watch over children walking to school.
On a recent day, Lindsey Voelker and Mary Beth Stanford Picker, health workers with the Hope Community Clinic, were out delivering groceries to some of its patients.
"I've tried to make sure nobody is following me," Voelker said. "Because I don't want to lead agents right to their doorstep."
Searching for the missing
Daniela Andrade, an advocate for immigrants at the Carolina Migrant Network, said among the deepest but most invisible wounds of the Border Patrol's operation are those torn into the families of the roughly 400 immigrants whisked away. Many are being held in detention centers elsewhere in the South. Her organization is the only one in North Carolina to provide free legal representation for detained immigrants, she said, and its lawyers have scrambled to track these people down and if possible, seek their release.
Advocates have also been telling immigrants to keep up their guard if they venture out to try to resume their routines.
The tension won't soon fade, Andrade said, because an entire community's trust has been broken.
"It's hard to say, oh, they're gone, let's go back to normal life," she said. "In these moments of crisis and fear in our community, it's hard to tell folks to trust."
The radio version of this story originally aired on Dec. 5, 2025.
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