This is a developing story. We will update it as new information becomes available.
The immigrant advocacy group Siembra NC announced on Sunday it had received “multiple credible reports” that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would send 50 agents to the Raleigh area this week for a new, month-long operation.
On Monday morning, a Siembra spokesperson told INDY they could not provide the source of the new information, “just that we trust it.” They added that Siembra NC believes the operation will just be ICE, with no involvement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which detained at least a dozen people in the Triangle on November 18. Siembra has been leading the effort to track and verify immigration agent sightings in North Carolina over the past month, and hosts trainings for individuals and businesses year-round on their first- and fourth amendment rights.
ICE public affairs spokesperson Lindsay Williams denied Siembra’s report but left plenty of ambiguity about the agency’s plans for the Triangle.
“We do operations in Raleigh and the Triangle area every day, seven days a week,” Williams said. “Nobody knows our plans, and whomever their source is is incorrect. We do stuff as we see fit or need to.
“So today, 200 people could show up and do something and then leave, or whatever. It’s fluid,” Williams continued. “We do planned operations that require extra people and stuff, but the public wouldn’t be privy to that.”
Siembra said in its press release that it doesn’t know specifically who or where ICE will target. The group noted that “ICE agents have rarely made the kind of racial profiling ‘snatch and grab’ arrests that CBP conducts regularly.” (A map maintained by Siembra showed no new verified sightings of agents in the Triangle as of Monday afternoon).
Raleigh mayor Janet Cowell told INDY on Monday morning that she had not received any information that would confirm Siembra NC’s report.
Wake County sheriff Willie Rowe released a statement Monday morning saying his office had not received any new information from ICE but that “presence of ICE personnel in Wake County is not new.” This is true—ICE has a small building in Cary.
Rowe said the sheriff’s office does not coordinate with ICE or conduct its own immigration enforcement. He asked residents “not to engage with or confront ICE personnel and to allow them to carry out their official duties.” In contrast, groups like Siembra and Ready the Ground Training Team are teaching volunteers to spot immigration agents, blow whistles to alert others, film interactions, and ask to see judicial warrants.
(When Rowe, a Democrat, was elected in 2022, he pledged not to reinstate Wake County’s 287(g) ICE collaboration agreement. He told INDY at the time that the program did “more harm than good.”)
A spokesperson for the Durham County sheriff’s office said on Monday afternoon that the office is not aware of planned ICE activity in Durham this month. “We are not informed prior to any such ICE or [CBP] operations being initiated in local jurisdictions,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
INDY reached out to several more Triangle-area elected officials on Monday, none of whom could share additional information to confirm Siembra’s report.
CBP briefly ramped up its operations in the Triangle in mid-November, detaining at least 12 people. During that time, tens of thousands of K-12 students stayed home from school and adults reportedly called out from work en masse.
While ICE and CBP have similar mandates and overlapping responsibilities, CBP agents have a reputation for misconduct and using especially aggressive tactics.
“We know this news may cause alarm, but we do not have information that suggests ICE is planning the same kinds of arrests as those conducted by CBP last week,” Siembra NC co-director Nikki Marín Baena wrote in the group’s press release. “And we hope they decide to change their plans before they are put in motion. North Carolina’s schoolchildren and parents do not need to be subjected to more chaos by federal law enforcement agents invited here by State House Speaker Destin Hall.”
Hall told the News & Observer in late November that federal immigration agents were “doing a pretty good job” and that he wanted them to “come back” to North Carolina.
Chloe Courtney Bohl is a Report for America corps member. Follow her on Bluesky or reach her at [email protected]. Comment on this story at [email protected].