Detained by ICE in court, 4 men’s pending Charlotte cases slam to a halt
Elder Andrade Nascimento walked into court ready for trial. Inside, immigration agents were ready for him.
The 31-year-old came to Mecklenburg County Courthouse Tuesday in uptown Charlotte to face allegations that he broke a woman’s pink iPhone and left bruises on her upper arms after a conversation about cheating in September.
Witnesses, including Nascimento’s alleged victim, prosecutors and District Judge Samantha Mobley were all there and ready for the bench trial to begin. Mobley was expected to decide this week whether Nascimento was guilty.
“And then poof,” Nascimento’s defense attorney, Rob Heroy, said. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents “whisked him away” before anything could begin.
Everyone was sent home, and a new court date was set for May.
Will ICE bring him back then?
Heroy is doubtful.
Nascimento was one of four men with pending criminal cases who were detained by immigration agents inside the Charlotte courthouse Tuesday afternoon, according to the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office. Since October, ICE agents have detained about 19 people inside court, EnLace Latino NC reported this week.
Mecklenburg District Attorney Spencer Merriweather and defense attorneys agreed, in separate interviews with The Charlotte Observer, that the strategy halts cases and could jeopardize justice.
Merriweather worries that Tuesday’s detainments, coupled with an unrelated fight inside the courthouse this week, might have a “chilling effect” on people’s willingness to show up in court. Without defendants, victims or witnesses present, prosecutors can’t do their job, Merriweather said.
What’s more, the sheriff’s office seems to be helping ICE, defense attorneys say.
The sheriff’s office denied this. But interviews with lawyers representing the four men who were detained this week reveal new details in the dramatic arrests.
Until now, those arrests were documented only by a sheriff’s report and a short note in an online court system:
DETAINED BY I.C.E. IN COURT.
Charlotte attorneys tell their side of court arrests
Gerson Molina, 46, was scheduled to appear Tuesday before the same judge as Nascimento on charges of domestic violence and assault on a female. Court documents say he beat his step-daughter with a belt for skipping school, even though her mother gave her permission not to go to class.
Molina and witnesses in his case were sitting inside a fourth-floor courtroom when “a member of the sheriff’s office asked (Molina) to come with them,” Daniel Wilkes, his public defender, told the Observer in an email.
ICE officers were waiting in a conference room adjacent to the courtroom and detained him, Wilkes said.
Other public defenders asked to get contact information for his family, but Molina was ushered away. Agents never showed a warrant, Wilkes said.
Witnesses were sent home. As of Friday, Wilkes doesn’t know where Molina is.
“Based on my experience, it is now common that the sheriff’s office is fully cooperating in these courthouse operations,” Wilkes said.
His experience is not isolated.
Down the hallway, Alfredo Xocua Xitlama was with his attorney when sheriff’s deputies ushered both of them into a conference room with immigration officers. A judge had not yet held Xitlama’s probable cause hearing on a driving while impaired charge.
Noel Salas, Xitlama’s attorney, was able to get family contact information, and officers told him his client would be taken to a processing center off Tyvola Road and then to Georgia.
But they wouldn’t show a warrant, Salas said.
The same thing happened to Nestor Ponce-Rivas, 31, who reported to court for a hearing on driving while impaired and child abuse charges. Court documents say he was drinking and driving with children in his car in August 2024.
His attorney, Harold Cogdell, was not yet in court when his client was detained, Codgell said. Cogdell does not know where Ponce-Rivas is.
Sheriff’s deputy says attorneys will be arrested next time
Sarah Mastouri, the sheriff department’s spokeswoman, said “deputies did not assist ICE agents in the arrests” Tuesday.
Mastouri added that the deputies did not intervene until after “defendants’ attorneys began yelling for help, questioning ICE agents and asking whether they had a warrant.” She said deputies did not stray from “previously established protocols for when ICE arrives at the courthouse to make arrests.” The Observer has asked for those protocols.
In October, McFadden and an ICE supervisor met to talk about “working together, doing arrests at the courthouse,” the Observer previously reported. After that meeting, McFadden touted a previous “incident-free” arrest as “exactly the kind of partnership that we’ve been requesting for years.”
This week’s arrests, though, resulted in an incident report.
In it, sheriff’s office Sergeant S. Williams wrote that “ICE Officer Sobrino” told him ahead of time about the four people they were in court for. Williams watched the arrests and noted that attorneys were asking agents for warrants — which they did not have.
Then Williams’ narrative turns to an attorney who had wedged herself between elevator doors as agents stood with a man on the other side. When the attorney called for help, Williams came over.
Then he told her to “step back” and relayed a message from agents: If attorneys interfere again, they will be arrested.
This story was originally published February 27, 2026 at 3:43 PM.
