Until now, President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown has focused largely on blue states like Illinois and California. Now Border Patrol agents have moved into the swing state of North Carolina, raising alarms about backlash from the state’s elected Republicans.
The move to expand immigration arrests to the Tar Heel State offers the “first test for whether the White House’s strategy can hold up in a purple state,” said Politico. Local GOP officials, though, have expressed alarm about high-profile incidents at a Charlotte shopping center and a local country club. The arrests have also triggered protests and business closures. The raids are leaving a “real sour aftertaste” with voters, said Edwin Peacock III, a Republican who recently ran for Charlotte City Council. “Is the price of doing this worth it?” The bad publicity is “maybe having a negative impact on my party,” said former Republican Gov. Pat McCrory.
Enforcement operations “might sway voters in next year’s elections,” said The New York Times. Independent voters “play an outsize role in the state,” and North Carolina in recent years has seen an influx of new residents from blue states. Memories of the crackdown could prove decisive in next year’s U.S. Senate race between former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and former Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley.
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“Why give voters in such a crucial state another reason to dislike Trump and his agenda,” said Paige Masten at The Charlotte Observer. Border Patrol “might be received differently” if it focused on arresting violent criminals, but instead the public has been treated to stories of “aggressively rounding up undocumented people at random or wrongfully targeting U.S. citizens.” Republicans may pay, as “Democrats will almost certainly remind voters next year.”
Trump’s immigration crackdown is “not so popular” now that “parents, neighbors and workers in North Carolina” are being swept up by the feds, said Ned Barnett at Raleigh’s The News Observer. North Carolina Republicans have for years joined the president in “political pandering to citizens’ fears or nativist views” on immigration, and GOP legislators have passed laws requiring state officials to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. But arrests and deportations are “punishing and frightening real people” who deserve better. North Carolina voters do not support that. “Neither should Republican lawmakers.”
While the “flash operation” in Charlotte does not represent the “immigration system North Carolina needs,” it is also wrong to “demonize federal agents” for enforcing the law, Andrew Dunn said, again at The Charlotte Observer. A wise system would welcome migrants as “full participants in our civic life” as long as they “come through the front door” legally. But if undocumented migrants can flout the system without fear of repercussions, “we don’t have an immigration system.”
What next?
A recent poll found the number of North Carolina residents who say the state is on the “wrong track” has risen by 20 points since Trump’s election, said Reuters. Democrats say they will fight back in the coming months by “arguing the Trump administration is overreaching.”
