(The Center Square) – Enforcement of America’s laws, says a North Carolina congressman, makes a just society, not a mean one, and not an evil one.
“Enforcing the law does not make us Klansmen, but failing to enforce the law will be our national suicide,” wrote U.S. Rep. Pat Harrigan, R-N.C., on social media responding to Operation Charlotte’s Web.
The freshman lawmaker called out Anderson Clayton, chairwoman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, for equating “ICE and Border Patrol agents to members of the KKK.” He pulled together the spider web touches of illegal immigration to criminal, societal and educational impact in a post of 947 words – more than three times the length of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
“After hearing from business leaders, farmers, politicians and everyone in between about their concerns of how this operation was handled,” Harrigan wrote, “I feel that good folks genuinely lack understanding of the size and scope that illegal immigration became under the Biden administration, and how that impacts the safety of our communities and the opportunities of future generations of American citizens today.”
Based on statements Wednesday of last week by Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles and Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden, published reports said the enhanced enforcement of federal immigration laws in the nation’s 14th largest city were coming to an end. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security led by Secretary Kristi Noem, on Thursday squelched that conversational direction.
Gregory Bovino, chief patrol agent of the El Centro Sector of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, late Monday evening said, “Charlotte’s Web brought to light the scope and depth of illegal immigration in and around the Queen City. Governor Stein ignores all this, instead going after DHS personnel who uncovered this madness.”
And he added, “More work to do in Charlotte.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has a permanent role in Charlotte. Homeland Security says the enhanced enforcement is ongoing. Published reports, including of a Homeland Security document about the operation, indicate a demobilization in the area sans the permanent presence.
First-term Democratic Gov. Josh Stein on Friday messaged Noem asking for answers on a dozen questions related to the operations in Charlotte. Neither have commented publicly on his request since.
Stein accused federal lawmen of unprofessional behavior and said they are “creating havoc in our communities.”
People across the state are paying attention. Videos of public schools across the state have filtered into media outlets and social media at large, including a protest at a Durham high school where students were high-fiving teachers amid a vulgar-laced chant of “f— ICE.”
Those two words together were the focus of a vulgar-laced image to social media posted by Rep. Julie Von Haefen, a Democrat from Wake County in the North Carolina House of Representatives. She’s the fourth-term representative that went viral in June with a social media post related to the beheading of President Donald Trump.
In her Nov. 16 post, a hat with a feather tops a skeletal image holding a glass, with the words under it, “I drink my horchata warm cause f— ICE.”
Clayton on Thursday posted a side-by-side image of a headline, “The South has seen masked kidnappers before,” and a hood such as would be worn by the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK is best known to many for its role in racial unrest of the last century; today it’s a lot more fragmented and has decreased in membership and visibility.
Harrigan, the Green Beret Army veteran, said, “At a minimum, 14 million illegal aliens entered the United States from 2021-2024, an unprecedented escalation. Some of these illegal aliens are not good people, and assertions that some foreign countries ‘emptied their prisons’ and relieved the burden of these folks onto the streets of the United States, are true.”
On Nov. 17, more than 20,000 students were absent in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County Schools. Harrigan notes there’s only 141,000 students in the district, and complaints about class size, per-capita spending and teachers needing language apps for translation purposes that slow the class learning as a whole fuel the challenges of public schools.
“The chairwoman of the North Carolina Democratic Party just equated ICE and Border Patrol agents to members of the KKK,” Harrigan says of Clayton. “Yes, the leader of a statewide political party is villainizing law enforcement, something that has happened repeatedly in Charlotte and every other American city in recent years, simply for upholding our laws and apprehending only 370 illegal aliens. But what she’s either conveniently forgetting or deliberately ignoring is what we’ve already discussed: countless Americans feel left behind.
“They see elite politicians prioritizing 370 illegal aliens over 750,000 American citizens who are simply trying to make it in life – and are struggling to do so. Yet the elite politicians are out there breaking their backs to protect illegal aliens without any regard for the safety of law enforcement, or corresponding outcomes for American citizens. This is a betrayal of the purpose of the government.”
Harrigan is clear that he supports legal ways to come to the United States.
“Although ours is a compassionate nation – who has taken the huddled masses – we are also a nation of laws,” Harrigan writes. “And the enforcement of those laws makes us a just society, not a mean one, and not an evil one. It is a lack of opportunity and justice that illegal immigrants are fleeing, finding refuge here in the United States.
“But when their first act in coming here is breaking the law, it sows the exact same seeds of chaos here that first destroyed the countries from which they left. That destruction will follow them here, if we do not enforce our laws.”
