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Charlotte’s Web, Redeployed: A Children’s Tale in the Hands of Power
White’s literary legacy is rooted in empathy, care, and the affirmation of life; the bureaucratic appropriation of his title stands in stark, almost satirical contrast to the world he sought to illuminate.
Nov 19, 2025
Growing up, there were a few books that left an indelible mark on me. Charlotte’s Web was one of them. Tolerance. Embracing those who are different. Overcoming fears. Seeing miracles in the ordinary. Having faith in the goodness of our neighbors. Love.
So when I saw that a federal immigration sweep in Charlotte, North Carolina had been named Charlotte’s Web, I felt a sharp, immediate repulsion. They were being clever—but how many of them had actually read the book? How different this country might be if more people absorbed its lessons: that protecting the vulnerable is an act of courage, not political theater.
Elwyn Brooks White (July 11, 1899-October 1, 1985) was an American writer whose work has endured across generations. He authored beloved children’s books, including Stuart Little (1945), Charlotte’s Web (1952), and The Trumpet of the Swan (1970). In a 2012 survey of School Library Journal readers, Charlotte’s Web ranked first among the top 100 children’s novels. Beyond children’s literature, White contributed to The New Yorker and co-authored The Elements of Style, the iconic English-language style guide. Kurt Vonnegut described him as “one of the most admirable prose stylists our country has so far produced.”
It is in this context—of a writer celebrated for clarity, humanity, and moral vision—that the repurposing of Charlotte’s Web for a mass immigration raid becomes especially jarring. White’s literary legacy is rooted in empathy, care, and the affirmation of life; the bureaucratic appropriation of his title stands in stark, almost satirical contrast to the world he sought to illuminate.
Charlotte herself, the real Charlotte, not the bureaucratic parody, spins her web to protect, not punish. She acts out of friendship, not force.
On a quiet Saturday in Charlotte, 81 people were arrested in roughly five hours as federal agents conducted a phase of the Trump administration’s nationwide immigration crackdown. Officers swept neighborhoods near churches and apartment complexes. Streets were unusually empty, businesses shuttered, and families stayed home, unsure whether their neighbors, or the law, could be trusted.
Gregory Bovino, the North Carolina-born Border Patrol commander leading “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” posted on X a quotation from the story’s ending, when Charlotte’s children float away on the wind:
Wherever the wind takes us. High, low. Near, far. East, west. North, south. We take to the breeze, we go as we please.
The irony is almost literary. In White’s story, the line is a meditation on freedom, impermanence, and the continuity of life, Charlotte’s children carried safely into a larger world after she has saved the pig. In Bovino’s hands, it frames a mass roundup, turning human beings into objects carried off by a bureaucratic breeze.
White himself described the inspiration behind Charlotte’s Web:
The theme of Charlotte’s Web is that a pig shall be saved, and I have an idea that somewhere deep inside me there was a wish to that effect.
Martha White, who manages her grandfather’s literary estate, made clear that his ethos could not be more distant from these raids. E.B. White “certainly didn’t believe in masked men, in unmarked cars, raiding people’s homes and workplaces without IDs or summons,” she told CNN, adding, “He didn’t condone fearmongering.” He believed in due process, in the rule of law, and in the basic dignity of life.
The spectacle of the Charlotte operation extended to social media, where detainees’ faces and alleged criminal histories were posted as proof of public safety. Here, White’s words carry a sting:
Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.
Activists handed out whistles to warn neighbors of Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence. Community members skipped work, school, and medical appointments. One dental clinic alone reported nine cancellations.
“Latinos love this country. They came here to escape socialism and communism, and they’re hard workers and people of faith,” said Paola Garcia, spokesperson for Camino, a nonprofit serving Charlotte’s Latino community. “They love their family, and it’s just so sad to see that this community now has this target on their back.”
Nikki Marín Baena, co-director of immigrant advocacy group Siembra NC, called the operation “a shameful day for the North Carolina Republican Party,” noting the celebration of what she described as “terrorist operations” and the recycling of Bovino’s rhetoric about “going after criminals.”
Before Saturday, the largest number of immigrant arrests in a single day in North Carolina was 30. Eighty-one in five hours—nearly triple the previous record, underscores the unprecedented scale of federal enforcement in a city already trembling with fear.
White wrote:
All that I hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.
And Charlotte herself, the real Charlotte, not the bureaucratic parody, spins her web to protect, not punish. She acts out of friendship, not force:
You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you… By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.
The contrast is stark. Charlotte’s web lifts; the raids constrict. The story teaches mercy; the sweep instills fear. Charlotte’s purpose is care; the operation’s purpose is spectacle. As White noted elsewhere:
One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.
Here, millions of hours of planning, messaging, and social-media framing were devoted to constructing enemies, while the human cost, fear, disruption, and trauma, remained largely invisible.
White’s fascination with animals and mortality lent his work an “eerie quality,” and he often described books themselves as “sneezes,” unexpected, uncontainable eruptions of human empathy. In Charlotte, North Carolina, this real-life web demonstrates the inverse: a calculated, coldly measured maneuver, a bureaucratic sneeze that spreads fear instead of care:
The world is full of talkers, but it is rare to find anyone who listens. And I assure you that you can pick up more information when you are listening than when you are talking.
The authorities talked. They posted. They broadcast. But they did not listen. Families stayed home. Children missed school. Communities watched one another with suspicion. Safety, in the administration’s terms, was achieved only at the expense of freedom. And yet, White reminds us:
Safety is all well and good: I prefer freedom.
This is Charlotte’s enduring lesson: the value of life, the importance of compassion, the courage to act out of love. Freedom, dignity, and human connection cannot be suspended at the altar of political performance. The people caught in this web may be removed, but their absence leaves a void that no number of arrests can fill.
Charlotte’s web, whether in a children’s book or in our daily lives, asks us to choose differently. To see, to listen, to protect. To be, as White’s story quietly insists, the kind of neighbor, and the kind of nation, that spins webs of care instead of cages.
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'This Is Our Reality': Charlotte Residents Horrified After Border Patrol Arrests Women for Honking Car Horn
"Our city has gone from a thriving city to a standstill," said one local official.
Nov 18, 2025
Residents in Charlotte, North Carolina are expressing outrage after two local women were arrested for honking their car horn to alert others that US Border Patrol was in the area.
Local news station WCNC reported on Monday that the two women, who are US citizens, were taken into custody in the city's Plaza Midwood neighborhood after Border Patrol agents pulled them over and accused them of interfering in operations by honking their horn.
Video of the incident shows masked federal agents yelling at the women and demanding that they roll down their car windows. When the women do not comply, one officer smashes through the window and then he and other officers pull them out of the vehicle.
The two women, who have not been identified, then spent several hours in an FBI facility before being released with citations.
Local resident Shea Watts, who took video of the encounter, told WCNC that he was feeling "somewhere between disbelief and just being really upset that this is our reality now" as he watched the incident unfold.
Watts also discussed his own interactions with the federal officers whom he was filming.
"I was already close to despair and feeling helpless and hopeless," he said. "But I think just the reminder that if we see something, to document it. I tried to be respectful and ask questions and knowing my own rights, and I was told to back up a couple times, which, that's fine, but at the end of the day, this all feels a little heavy handed."
Charlotte has become the latest target of the Trump administration's mass deportation operation, which has already drawn opposition from both local residents and elected officials in the North Carolina city.
NBC News reported on Monday that many Charlotte residents are living in fear of immigration operations in the city, with some local businesses closing down and some local churches reporting dramatic drops in attendance during the current operation.
Jonathan Ocampo, US citizen of Colombian descent who lives in the area, told NBC News that he's started carrying his passport with him everywhere for fear of being mistaken for an undocumented immigrant.
"I’m carrying it here right now, which is sad," he said. "It's just scary."
Charlotte city council member-elect JD Mazuera Arias told The Guardian on Monday that the immigration enforcement operations have had a chilling effect on the entire community.
"Our city has gone from a thriving city to a standstill," he said.
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Charlotte Residents Defend Community as ICE Arrives for Latest Trump Immigration Crackdown
"In a scenario where this administration is trying to sow division," said one local organizer, "we see an organic movement of community members trying to provide support and assistance.”
Nov 17, 2025
In Charlotte, North Carolina, the Trump administration's latest anti-immigration crackdown garnered headlines over the weekend both for "how inhumane and aggressive" the operations by US Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were, as one journalist said, and the action that local residents immediately took to protect their neighbors from arrests and raids.
"I just started recording them," said Rheba Hamilton after federal agents pulled up to her house in a vehicle and intimidated two Latino men who were decorating the trees in her yard. "They left."
As the agents pulled away, she yelled, "Get the hell out of my yard, you assholes!"
Hamilton, who told The New York Times she had tried to warn the workers against hanging the Christmas lights due to the deportation operations, said it was "terrifying" to see Border Patrol agents on her property.
"I was concerned about this happening," Hamilton said. "We've got great people here... Nobody's going to regret moving here if you come here with the right kind of heart, and that includes our immigrants."
Hamilton filmed the Border Patrol agents after North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, called on Charlotte residents to "bear witness" to ICE arrests and raids at businesses and homes as the Trump administration launched "Operation Charlotte's Web"—the latest stop on its nationwide attack on immigrant and Latino communities, which has also unfolded in Chicago and other cities.
“If you see any inappropriate behavior, use your phones to record and notify local law enforcement, who will continue to keep our communities safe long after these federal agents leave,” said Stein last week.
Operation Charlotte's Web began as the administration released the names of more than 600 people detained in the Chicago area whose arrests may have violated a court order, and revealed that just 16 of them had an alleged criminal history.
More than 3,000 people in all have been arrested in the Chicago area since ICE and other federal agencies began "Operation Midway Blitz" in September.
Border Patrol Commander-at-large Gregory Bovino reported that at least 81 people were arrested in Charlotte by the end of the weekend, with the mass arrests completed in about five hours, and claimed that those who were taken into custody had “significant criminal and immigration history"—similar claims that have been made about the operations in Chicago.
The local advocacy group Siembra NC said “the most immigrants were arrested in a single day in state history" on Saturday.
The community development group CharlotteEast told the Guardian on Sunday that it had received an "overwhelming" number of reports from residents about Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in the area, including at places that were previously protected under the Biden administration from immigration enforcement.
“The past two hours we’ve received countless reports of CBP activity at churches, apartment complexes, and a hardware store,” executive director Greg Asciutto told the outlet.
The Charlotte Observer reported that congregants at a church in east Charlotte "scattered into the woods" after masked federal agents arrived and detained a member while the church community was doing yard work.
"The agents asked no questions and showed no identification before taking one man away, whose wife and child were inside at the time," the newspaper reported. "Inside the church, women and children sobbed as they wondered whether their loved ones had been taken."
Sam Stein of the Bulwark noted that community members "got the heads up and ran to the woods to confront ICE agents with, among other things, deafening whistles. ICE responded by threatening to throw gas canisters at them."
Advocates handed out whistles—like those used by many in Chicago in recent weeks—to local residents on Sunday, and hundreds of people packed a training session on Friday night where Carolina Migrant Network advised them on banding together to stop ICE from raiding their communities.
Charlotte NC: Activists are handing out whistles to community members to alert their neighbors to the presence of ICE and Federal Agents pic.twitter.com/0lranCzuip
— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) November 16, 2025
A grocery store, Compare Foods, also announced it would be offering free delivery to keep people from having to venture out while federal agents are in the city.
"For all those customers who don't feel comfortable coming to the store in person, they can shop online, and then we will have it delivered through our delivery service to their home," said Omar Jorge, owner of the local chain.
Manolo's Bakery, meanwhile, closed over the weekend for the first time in its 28-year history, with owner Manolo Betancur telling the Observer, "We need to protect our families [from] family separation."
Stefania Arteaga of the Carolina Migrant Network told the Guardian that the grassroots weekend efforts show "allies are learning how to help their neighbors" in the city.
"In a scenario where this administration is trying to sow division," she said, "we see an organic movement of community members trying to provide support and assistance.”
Daniel Nichanian of Bolts magazine said Charlotte—which is not near a US border—likely was chosen as President Donald Trump's latest target because of a "war" between ICE and Mecklenburg County Sheriff Gary McFadden, going back to 2018 when McFadden was among five Black Democrats who won sheriff elections in the state on the promise of ending cooperation with ICE.
The agency targeted Charlotte two years later, posting billboards that showed mugshots of immigrants arrested in the area.
As with other cities Trump has targeted for mass deportation operations this year, crime has been falling in Charlotte, with an 8% decrease in overall crime last month compared to a year prior, and a 20% reduction in violent crimes.
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