Following the arrival of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in Durham on Tuesday, local officials and immigrant rights organizers described a day of fear, detentions, and community action.
Federal agents, donning camo and masks, were seen across Durham and the Triangle on Tuesday. At the same time, volunteers fanned out to warn local businesses that CBP was in the area, try to intervene in detentions, and provide a reassuring and protective presence as local schools were dismissed.
Residents reported seeing agents outside local grocery stores and home improvement shops across Durham, according to a map of reported sightings created by Siembra NC, an organization formed after President Donald Trump’s election in 2017 to support the Latine community. Red dots indicating each report form a line along Roxboro Street, with clusters in north and east Durham.
Siembra NC said in a news release that at least a dozen people had been detained in Raleigh, Durham, and Cary as of 1 p.m. Tuesday, though it was unclear how many were detained in Durham specifically.
During a press conference on Tuesday night, local elected officials and representatives from Siembra NC said they did not know how many Triangle residents had been detained. A CBP spokesperson did not immediately respond to messages from the INDY.
“Not only do we not know how many people were abducted, but we don’t know where they were taken to,” state senator Sophia Chitlik, a Durham Democrat, said at the press conference. “This is not a clear, transparent process. That’s part of the point, right? That’s part of the fear. “
Tuesday marked the fourth day of CBP operations in North Carolina; more than 200 people have been detained in Charlotte, according to CBP. In addition to Durham, Siembra and local officials have reported people being detained in Raleigh, Apex, and Cary as well.
Nida Allam, who chairs the Durham County Board of Commissioners, witnessed three people being detained in an East Durham shopping center on Tuesday afternoon.
“[CBP] agents were heavily armed, masks covering their face, kidnapping three men right here in Durham, refusing to show a warrant, refusing to explain anything, and they acted like they were in a war zone, not in a neighborhood where families were shopping and working,” Allam said. “Durham is over 1,300 miles from the border. None of this was about securing our borders, none of it was about enforcing the law. It was a show of force meant to scare people.”
The arrival of CBP agents appeared to have made a measurable impact on Durham Public Schools attendance on Tuesday.
Although the district has not yet released official attendance numbers for Tuesday, Chitlik said at the press conference that “over 30 percent of students were absent.”
Durham County Commissioner Mike Lee, who previously served on the school board, drives a school bus to help with the district’s bus driver shortage. Only about 20 of the 54 students normally on his elementary school route were present Tuesday morning, Lee posted on social media.
Tuesday’s press conference was held at an East Durham daycare center that went into lockdown Tuesday as Border Patrol agents parked outside. Members of the Durham City Council, Board of County Commissioners, school board, and state legislative delegation were present.
Notably absent was Mayor Leonardo Williams, who traveled to Washington D.C., on Tuesday morning to make an appearance on the news program Morning Joe, during which he spoke about immigration enforcement.
Concerns began spreading on Monday night that CBP agents would be coming to Durham, in addition to Raleigh, where Mayor Janet Cowell said agents were expected to be “active.” Without confirmation of CBP’s plans for Durham, some officials told the public that immigration agents were not expected in the Bull City.
Williams told WRAL that agents were not planning to go to Durham, but the city was preparing anyway. Chitlik posted on social media that “CBP will likely be in Raleigh in the next 48 hours and *not* in Durham.” At Tuesday’s press conference, Chitlik said local leaders didn’t want to create a panic in Durham and, once they learned of credible CBP activity in the city, started to alert local organizers.
“It’s not like Donald Trump is calling us and texting us his plans,” Chitlik said. “When we found out, we mobilized. We knew that it wouldn’t just be Raleigh.”
Local officials said they did not know how long CBP would be in the area, but cautioned people to remain vigilant.
Siembra NC co-director Nikki Marín Baena said that, following reports on Monday night that CBP was coming to the Triangle, about 700 people signed up to join shifts monitoring and reporting agents’ activity in Raleigh, Garner, and Durham.
“I think that while a lot of the stories that we hear might be about the violence of the detention and about how unfair all of this is, I think it’s also important to show how people are showing up for each other on very short notice,” Baena said.
Mauricio Borgen is a Nicaraguan native who has called Durham home for 23 years. Borgen and a friend completed Siembra NC training on Saturday and drove to Charlotte to join the volunteer efforts. Volunteers patrolled the city using maps to track federal agent sightings and communicated activity via group chat.
On Monday, after Borgen heard reports of agents coming to the Triangle, he gathered resources and information to hand out about personal rights and what to do if confronted by CBP agents. He also continued to track vehicles—typically unmarked vans and SUVs with out-of-state license plates—that Siembra and others identified as possible CBP transports.
“We kind of killed two birds, trying to educate people and notify them, and also spot the feds,” Borgen said.
Borgen has noticed some folks celebrating agents’ arrival in social media comments. But that only deepened Borgen’s commitment to protecting the place he calls home.
“If you go to Facebook, it is really scary and gross the way people are cheering on this. I don’t want to see it become unwelcoming and racist,” he says. “I feel like this is an attack on the very fabric of our community. So I’m not gonna sit here and complain. It is a lot of work, and it’s definitely emotionally hard to process. But the best thing is, instead of seeing people talk a lot of shit, just be positive and inform people.”
Durham City Council Member Javiera Caballero called on community members to volunteer, donate, and support their neighbors.
“Your neighbors are going to need you in these next few days, people, Thanksgiving is next week,” Caballero said at the press conference. “There are lots of neighbors who are not going to want to go to their grocery store. They’re not going to want to send their kids to school, and rightfully so—they are terrified.
“Durham will not be cowed,” she added. “We will always stand up and defend our neighbors. We’ve done it before, and we will do it again.”
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