Charlotte raids expose hollow core of Trump’s immigration crackdown
Nothing better illustrates the absurdity of the Trump administration’s immigrant crackdown than its recent show of force in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“Border Patrol has ended their immigration enforcement operation in Charlotte, North Carolina, nearly a week after the agency first deployed agents to the state’s most populated city,” reported NBC News. “The operation dubbed ‘Charlotte’s Web’ by DHS resulted in the immigration arrests of more than 250 people.”
As I’ve noted repeatedly, it has always been difficult and wildly inefficient for federal authorities to stage mass roundups in hostile territory—blue states and blue cities where local law enforcement agencies refuse to play along. Immigration and Customs Enforcement claims roughly 20,000 employees, but that number includes an ocean of support staff. Even with the Department of Homeland Security desperately trying to hire more agents, the force’s size is nowhere near what would be required to execute President Donald Trump’s fantasy of deporting millions.
Charlotte puts that gap in stark relief.
DHS flooded the city with who-knows-how-many agents for an entire week, only to net about 250 arrests—roughly 35 a day. The cost of deploying, housing, transporting, and supporting those agents likely ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars (or more!) for what amounts to a statistical blip in a city deliberately working to impede ICE’s operations.
Yet DHS now claims those same agents will be redeployed to Louisiana and Mississippi to arrest 5,000 people in the coming weeks. That’s the difference between operating with full cooperation from state and local authorities and operating in jurisdictions that resist. And it’s why the administration is so deeply frustrated that its mass-deportation fantasies of 3,000 arrests per day keep smashing into reality.
Related | There’s only so much damage Trump can do in a sanctuary city
Meanwhile, Trump is sending an entirely different message when it comes to the immigrants he and his donors actually want. Just this week in Saudi Arabia, Trump told an audience of business executives that the United States needs immigrants who can train domestic workers in high-tech factories, insisting that doing so aligns perfectly with his political beliefs.
“I love my conservative friends. I love MAGA. But this is MAGA,” he said at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, appearing alongside Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. These workers, Trump said, would teach Americans how to make computer chips, and then “those people can go home.”
Of course, H-1B visa workers aren’t being brought in to “train domestic workers.” They’re hired because tech billionaires like Elon Musk want a cheaper labor force that won’t complain, won’t organize, and won’t jump ship for better pay at a tech company across the street.
Which gets to the heart of the whole project: Trump isn’t crafting a coherent immigration policy. He’s staging a political stunt—punishing the immigrants his base hates while quietly protecting the ones corporate America finds useful.
The cruelty is for show, the favoritism is for his donors, and the whole thing collapses and beats a hasty retreat the moment it has to operate in the real world.
Related | Looks like ICE recruits are a hot mess
