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Trump Admin Sued Over 'Unlawful Warrantless Arrests' During North Carolina ICE Blitz
“I am a US citizen, but my papers did not protect me,” said one plaintiff. “I want to be involved in this case because I don’t want this to happen to anyone else."
Feb 24, 2026
A coalition of advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Tuesday "seeking to prevent a pattern of unlawful warrantless arrests in North Carolina that is harming communities" during the Trump administration's deadly crackdown on undocumented immigrants and their defenders.
Democracy Forward, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of North Carolina, and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice (SCSJ) sued the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on behalf of five individuals, including four American citizens and one legal US resident from El Salvador.
“I am a US citizen, but my papers did not protect me,” 46-year-old plaintiff Willy Aceituno said in a statement. “I want to be involved in this case because I don’t want this to happen to anyone else. I want to help protect my Latino family, friends, and neighbors.”
Another plaintiff, 23-year-old North Carolina native Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, said: “I have a lot of fear that this will happen to me again. I was essentially kidnapped based only on the color of my skin. That really weighs on me."
“I think it is important to take action through this case so that the government starts doing their jobs correctly instead of stopping people solely because they look a certain way," Cuenca added.
Democracy Forward said in a statement announcing the lawsuit: "In mid-November, the Trump-Vance administration accelerated its immigration crackdown across North Carolina during Operation Charlotte’s Web. Heavily armed, masked DHS agents, including ICE and CBP officers, roamed Charlotte, Durham, Raleigh, and other communities, detaining and arresting people indiscriminately without warrants or legal justification."
"Each plaintiff was arrested by DHS agents without probable cause to believe that they are legally removable from the country and that they pose a flight risk—determinations required under federal law for warrantless arrests," Democracy Forward continued.
The plaintiffs “represent a class of individuals who have been or will be subjected to warrantless immigration arrests by DHS in North Carolina, including arrests made without probable cause based on flight risk or removability," the group added. "They ask the federal court for the Western District of North Carolina to declare DHS’ mass warrantless arrest policy unlawful and to issue a permanent injunction blocking these unlawful practices.”
ACLU-NC staff attorney Corina Scott said in a statement Tuesday: “Federal immigration agents have consistently ignored the law and trampled civil rights in North Carolina. This lawsuit seeks to stop this abuse of power and demand accountability going forward so that our communities do not continue to suffer violent and unlawful arrests.”
We just filed the first class action lawsuit challenging unlawful warrantless immigration arrests in North Carolina amid the federal government's crackdown. Join us in calling for an end to ICE & CBP terror! https://rebrand.ly/iceout
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— ACLU of North Carolina (@aclunc.bsky.social) February 24, 2026 at 2:40 PM
Democracy Forward president and CEO Skye Perryman said that “when armed, masked agents are breaking car windows, handcuffing people without probable cause, and dumping them on the side of the road, that is not law enforcement, it is lawlessness."
"Congress was explicit: Warrantless immigration arrests require individualized probable cause to be proven," she noted. "That standard is not optional based on the whims of whoever is in the White House. [DHS] is carrying out mass arrests that disregard the limits that Congress imposed and the Constitution requires. Federal agencies do not have the authority to sweep up people in America—whether they are US citizens, lawful residents, or anyone else—without legal justification."
"This case is about restoring basic guardrails on government power and ensuring that federal officers follow the law they are sworn to uphold," Perryman added.
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North Carolina Students Walk Over a Mile to Vote After GOP Shut Down Campus Polling Places
"Aggies do what is necessary for our rights, for our survival, and for our people,” said one student organizer at North Carolina A&T State University, the largest historically Black college in the nation.
Feb 14, 2026
As early voting began for the state primaries, North Carolina college students found themselves walking more than a mile to cast their ballots after the Republican-controlled State Board of Elections closed polling places on their campuses.
The board, which shifted to a 3-2 GOP majority, voted last month to close a polling site at Western Carolina University and to reject the creation of polling sites at two other colleges—the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNC Greensboro), and the North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (NC A&T), the largest historically Black college in the nation. Each of these schools had polling places available on campus during the 2024 election.
The decision, which came just weeks before early voting was scheduled to begin, left many of the 40,000 students who attend these schools more than a mile away from the nearest polling place.
It was the latest of many efforts by North Carolina Republicans to restrict voting ahead of the 2026 midterms: They also cut polling place hours in dozens of counties and eliminated early voting on Sundays in some, which dealt a blow to "Souls to the Polls" efforts led by Black churches.
A lawsuit filed late last month by a group of students at the three schools said, “as a result, students who do not have access to private transportation must now walk that distance—which includes walking along a highway that lacks any pedestrian infrastructure—to exercise their right to vote.
The students argued that this violates their access to the ballot and to same-day registration, which is only available during the early voting period.
Last week, a federal judge rejected their demand to open the three polling centers. Jay Pavey, a Republican member of the Jackson County elections board, who voted to close the WCU polling site, dismissed fears that it would limit voting.
“If you really want to vote, you'll find a way to go one mile,” Pavey said.
Despite the hurdles, hundreds of students in the critical battleground state remained determined to cast a ballot as early voting opened.
On Friday, a video posted by the Smoky Mountain News showed dozens of students marching in a line from WCU "to their new polling place," at the Jackson County Recreation Center, "1.7 miles down a busy highway with no sidewalks."
The university and on-campus groups also organized shuttles to and from the polling place.
A similar scene was documented at NC A&T, where about 60 students marched to their nearest polling place at a courthouse more than 1.3 miles away.
The students described their march as a protest against the state's decision, which they viewed as an attempt to limit their power at the ballot box.
The campus is no stranger to standing up against injustice. February 1 marked the 66th anniversary of when four Black NC A&T students launched one of the most pivotal protests of the civil rights movement, sitting down at a segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Greensboro—an act that sparked a wave of nonviolent civil disobedience across the South.
"Aggies do what is necessary for our rights, for our survival, and for our people,” Jae'lah Monet, one of the student organizers of the march, told Spectrum News 1.
Monet said she and other students will do what is necessary to get students to the polls safely and to demonstrate to the state board the importance of having a polling place on campus. She said several similar events will take place throughout the early voting period.
"We will be there all day, and we will all get a chance to vote," Monet said.
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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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