OAN Staff Cory Hawkins
2:30 PM – Thursday, December 4, 2025
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that the arrests of hundreds of criminal illegal aliens in Charlotte, North Carolina, have continued to rise, despite Mecklenburg County officials incorrectly stating that the federal enforcement operation had come to an end.
On Wednesday, the Homeland Security reported that, so far, over 425 people have been arrested in the Charlotte area. However, the names of the arrested individuals have not been released.
“Operation Charlotte’s Web,” which began on November 15th, was launched as a targeted immigration enforcement surge in Charlotte, NC, focusing on illegal aliens with criminal records — domestic violence, assault, DWI, and more serious offenses like sexual exploitation of minors.
“The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and federal agencies continue to target some of the most dangerous criminal illegal aliens as Operation Charlotte’s Web progresses,“ the DHS spokesperson reported Wednesday, December 3. ”This immigration enforcement surge in the Charlotte area has resulted in the arrest of more than 425 illegal aliens since operations began.”
On November 20th, the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office issued a press release announcing that the operation had “officially concluded,” claiming that federal officials had confirmed Border Patrol agents were departing Charlotte and no further CBP operations would occur that day.
However, hours later, an official with the Department of Homeland Security denied this report on Friday, with a post on X.
“Wrong. Operation Charlotte’s Web isn’t ending anytime soon,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin wrote on X, quoting a tweet from a North Carolina newspaper saying that the operation ended.
Homeland Security has not announced when the operation will officially conclude, and the existing number of Border Patrol agents in the city remains unknown.
“We’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling, and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks, this is not making us safer. It’s stoking fear and dividing our community,” North Carolina Governor Josh Stein stated.
Several schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg district staged walkouts during the beginning of the week to protest the Trump administration’s federal presence. Monday and Tuesday saw more than 56,000 students absent from Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools.
Despite earlier confusion over the status of federal agents in Charlotte, operations have continued and expanded elsewhere in North Carolina. Reports indicate that Border Patrol and ICE teams shifted focus to the Raleigh-Durham area earlier this week.
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