Nov. 16 (UPI) — A senior Border Patrol official said Sunday that 81 “illegal aliens” have been rounded up in raids in Charlotte, N.C., in an operation dubbed “Charlotte’s Web.”
Federal agents arrived in the city Saturday to launch the operation, with businesses closing in the city as people began to be arrested and detained in local neighborhoods.
“Illegal aliens with criminal histories and warrants don’t hang out in front of big box hardware stores? Well, then how did we find this illegal alien from Honduras there?” Greg Bovino, commander-at-large of the agency, said on social media in a post that included a photo of a crying woman he detained in Charlotte.
Bovino said another person he arrested, from Honduras, had been ordered to leave by an immigration judge in April.
“Guess he didn’t get the word, so we let him know…that he’s gotta go,” Bovino wrote.
Overall, he said that his team had arrested 81 people since arriving in Charlotte on Saturday, and that “many” — but not all — of them had significant criminal and immigration history.
“This was done in about five hours!” Bovino said. “Stay tuned to social media to take a look at who we apprehended.”
Charlotte is the latest in a string of cities across the country, including Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, where federal agencies have staged similar raids as part of immigration enforcement.
The raids have been criticized for their scope and nature, with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops this week issuing a statement that it opposes “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”
“Human dignity and national security are not in conflict,” the group said. “Both are possible if people of good will work together.”
White House Border Czar Tom Homan, who has championed the city-by-city immigration raids and round-ups, called the bishops “wrong” in comments at the White House on Friday, noting that he is a lifelong Catholic.
“A secure border saves lives,” Homan told reporters outside the West Wing. “We’re going to enforce the law and by doing that we save a lot of lives.”
Bovino himself also has faced criticism for his confrontational manner of arresting people for deportation.
The Project on Government Oversight last week issued a report analyzing four years of federal data that said Bovino has presided over a “disproportionate” amount of use-of-force incidents compared to the amount of assaults they’ve faced.
Meanwhile, Bovino has emerged as a central figure in President Donald Trump‘s crackdown on immigration.
Bovino’s trip to Charlotte comes after raids in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood in recent weeks, in which he ordered his agents to tear-gas civilians.
After the raids in Chicago, he and his team took selfies at Anish Kapoor‘s Cloud Gate, the sculpture by artist Anish Kapoor colloquially known as the “bean.”
In comments to Urgent Matter, Kapoor likened Bovino and his team to “Nazis” for “intimidating the people they seem to be immigrants.”
“I am deeply horrified and saddened that U.S. Border Patrol has chosen to rally in front of Cloud Gate for their self-congratulatory photo-opp,” Kapoor said.