Hundreds of NC United Methodists denounce federal immigration raids
Leaders and members of more than 600 congregations of the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church have signed onto a full-page ad in The Charlotte Observer condemning aggressive conduct by federal immigration agencies.
The ad, signed by more than 800 congregants and clergy across the conference’s 640 churches, appears in the Feb. 4 print paper. The ad was paid for by individual donors. It calls the treatment of immigrants during recent ICE raids “aggressive, undisciplined, illegal, and inhumane.” The ad follows the killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota by federal agents in January.
North Carolina has also seen questionable behavior by federal agents during a Border Patrol immigration operation last fall. In November, during what the Department of Homeland Security coined “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” immigration officials arrested some 400 people, stopped and shattered the window of a U.S. citizen’s truck, and chased a Charlotte man after he was caught recording them and planned to “smash” into him with their car.
Bishop Ken Carter, the resident bishop of the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, said the ad was born out of a grassroots desire from congregants who saw what was happening in Charlotte and across the country and wanted to take a stand. They didn’t want their silence to be misconstrued as approval, he said.
“This is more people trying to reckon with how I live as a person of faith, on the one hand, where I say that I love people. I love all people because they’ve been created in God’s image, no exceptions,” Carter said. “... and then on the other hand, how do I live within my heart and within my life with what I see happening in my country. People are trying to reconcile those two things.”
Last February, the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church joined two other faith groups in suing the Trump administration over changes that allowed immigration officials into churches.
Immigrants have the same hopes and dreams as everyone else, Carter said. They are people of faith, contribute to the community and want to keep their families safe.
“It’s more an act of loving our neighbor,” he said. “We love our country. And we want our country to be a place, as we have been for years, … where people can come and have liberty and justice.”
Mattie Queen, a senior at Forestview High School in Gastonia, was part of a small committee that helped write the statement.
Since she wasn’t old enough to vote in the last election, Queen said, she didn’t have a say in many of the things she sees happening across the country. This was an opportunity to lend her voice to a cause she’s passionate about.
“I think a lot of people are just afraid to recognize when injustices are present, and then nothing gets done to change them,” Queen said. “I just hope that this statement will kind of be a call to action, really, to be an advocate.”
This story was originally published February 4, 2026 at 5:01 AM.