Javier Carbajal says he was driving home on Thursday with a co-worker from their job as electricians when they encountered about a dozen Columbus County Sheriff’s Office vehicles at a checkpoint in Tabor City.
Carbajal said deputies asked for proof the men are U.S. citizens. Carbajal, who is of Mexican heritage but was born in North Carolina, showed them his driver’s license. But deputies detained Edgar Barrera Guizar, an undocumented immigrant from Oaxaca, Mexico who has lived in the U.S. for about 30 years, according to Carbajal.
“I feel so guilty for putting him in that position,” Carbajal told the Border Belt Independent. “We could’ve gone a different route or maybe tried to leave. But they had the intersection surrounded. I don’t think we could have.”
The Columbus County Sheriff’s Office told the Border Belt Independent that deputies arrested two people on September 24 as part of an “operation checkpoint” with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office declined to identify those who were arrested and referred further questions to federal authorities. A spokesperson for ICE said the agency works with local law enforcement agencies behind the scenes to process people who are living in the country illegally.
Siembra NC, a grassroots organization that advocates for Latinos and immigrants, said the number of people arrested was much higher. The group said it talked to family members of at least 10 people, including Barrera Guizar, who were arrested between 5:30 and 7 p.m. the day of the checkpoint near N.C. 904 and Pireway Road.
Andreina Malki, a defense manager with Siembra NC, said law enforcement officials who ask people where they were born are “racially motivated.”
“I don’t see another reason you would ask the passenger in a work vehicle where they were born,” she said. “I can’t say what their motivation is, but I can’t find any other logical reason or any other motivation for that.”
Barrera Guizar’s family declined to speak to the Border Belt Independent. Carbajal said the family told him Barrera Guizar was transferred to a detention center in Georgia.
Other families did not know where their loved ones were taken, despite calls to the detention centers in Columbus, Onslow, and New Hanover counties, according to Siembra NC.
Carbajal said his friend’s arrest has been replaying in his head. He said Barrera Guizar was visibly nervous and told him, “They got me. I’m going away.”
Other witnesses said they too saw Latino men on the side of the road with zip ties around their hands, according to Siembra NC. Carbajal said Barrera Guizar and other people were put in a van.
The Columbus County Sheriff’s Office is one of nine law enforcement agencies across the state that participate in the 287(g) Task Force Model program in which officers can work closely with ICE to detain people who are living in the country illegally, according to the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.
The 287(g) program was created in 1996 and has expanded significantly under Donald Trump’s administration, according to a report from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.
“This is exactly what we have warned happens when local law enforcement becomes an extension of ICE,” Malki said in Siembra NC’s news release. “A license checkpoint should not turn into an immigration dragnet where workers coming home after a long day are asked where they were born, passengers are asked to produce immigration papers, and families are left calling jail after jail trying to find their loved ones.”
About 7% of residents in rural Columbus County are Hispanic, according to U.S. Census data. In Tabor City, fewer than 2% of residents are Hispanic.