Border Patrol left Charlotte. The damage stayed behind. : NPR
Manolo’s Bakery in Charlotte, one of several Latino businesses that closed their doors to protect their customers when Border Patrol agents descended on the city. It has since reopened, but not all businesses have.
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Almost as quickly as they descended on Charlotte, spreading terror through the city’s immigrant neighborhoods, Border Patrol agents seemed to have mostly disappeared. After a week of crackdowns in which the government said agents detained hundreds of immigrants, arresting many of them 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 band together after what felt like a whiplash operation last month, they are discovering that the impacts on their lives and their city have endured and could last for a long time.
“It’s like a hurricane has passed,” said Stephanie Sneed, president of the school board that oversees the Charlotte public school system, “and then we have to deal with the aftermath, which is much longer lasting than the event itself.”
During the week in mid-November that the Border Patrol was scouring Charlotte, about 20 percent of public school children stayed home from school. Attendance began to rebound the week after the officers left, but Sneed said teachers reported that some Latino children were arriving at school with notes pinned to their backpacks saying, “I’m a citizen.”
“I would never think that’s something I would see,” Sneed said.
Here are some other ways the Border Patrol’s week of aggressively enforcing the Trump administration’s immigration agenda in Charlotte has reshaped parts of the city.
Central Avenue has long been a bustling pedestrian thoroughfare that runs through the heart of Charlotte’s immigrant neighborhoods. Calm returned after the Border Patrol began stopping people walking on its sidewalks.
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“This avenue was always crowded”
Central Avenue has always been a bustling pedestrian corridor. It runs through the heart of East Charlotte’s immigrant neighborhoods.
“This avenue was always crowded, 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 busy with families walking to grocery stores, restaurants and the laundromat, he said.
The morning the Border Patrol arrived, Betancur was heading to work at his bakery himself – passport in pocket – when an SUV sped by and stopped half a block in front of him. Several federal agents jumped out, he said, attacked three men, tied their hands and took them away. Betancur turned around in panic and alerted several families who were further down the block and walking in his direction.
Manolo Betancur, a Colombian immigrant and American citizen, closed his Latino bakery to protect his customers. It has since reopened and many white Charlotte residents have rallied in support. But other businesses serving the immigrant community are still closed as their owners assess the risks.
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“I told them, ‘They’re here! They’re here! Go home!’, and everyone started running home.” Betancur and many others have closed their doors. He didn’t want his customers to risk their freedom to buy a birthday cake. It has since reopened, but others have not. Weeks later, the sidewalks of Central Avenue are still unusually quiet.
To reduce the risk of being stopped by immigration officials while walking her children to school, an undocumented immigrant, whose first initial is R, used a machete to cut her way through the woods behind her apartment complex.
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Hiding from immigration officers 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 knocked on her door twice during their operation in the city. She takes care of the children while their parents are at work. Most of her clients stopped bringing their children, but recently she still had two.
A routine part of his 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 her way through the woods behind her apartment complex. “They won’t find me in there,” she said, “and if they do, I’ll run away.”
Another undocumented woman in hiding, E, said she doesn’t believe the Border Patrol agents have actually left, especially since federal authorities have insisted the checks will continue.
“They’re waiting for us to come out,” E said, “so they can chase us like a cat chases a mouse.”
Mary Beth Stanford Picker and Lindsey Voelker, employees of Charlotte’s Hope Community Clinic, provide groceries, medication and mental health services to immigrants too afraid to leave their homes.
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Deliver food products to hidden people
Many hidden immigrants rely on their allies to help them provide basic services like food and medicine delivery. Volunteers have established a support network. People deliver supplies, take reports of vehicles suspected of belonging to immigration agents and check them out, and wear bright yellow vests while monitoring children on their way to school.
Recently, Hope Community Clinic health workers Lindsey Voelker and Mary Beth Stanford Picker were delivering groceries to some of her patients.
“I tried to make sure no one followed me,” Voelker said. “Because I don’t want to lead the agents to their door.”
Daniela Andrade of the Carolina Migrant Network. His lawyers have struggled to locate and try to secure the release of many immigrants arrested during the Border Patrol’s Charlotte operation. They also fielded numerous calls from immigrants asking if it was safe for them to return to their lives.
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In search of the missing
Daniela Andrade, an immigrant rights advocate with the Carolina Migrant Network, said that among the deepest but most invisible wounds of the Border Patrol operation are those torn apart in the families of the nearly 400 immigrants taken away. Many are being held in detention centers elsewhere in the South. Her organization is the only one in North Carolina that provides free legal representation to detained immigrants, she said, and its attorneys have been racing to find these people and, if possible, secure their release.
Advocates also asked immigrants to remain on guard if they venture outside to try to resume their routines.
The tension won’t ease anytime soon, Andrade said, because the trust of an entire community has been broken.
“It’s hard to say, oh, they’re gone, let’s go back to normal life,” she said. “In these times of crisis and fear in our community, it’s hard to tell people to trust.”
An immigrant neighborhood in Charlotte.
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The radio version of this story was originally broadcast on December 5, 2025.
