Charlotte ICE traffic stops 'exactly the same’ as stops briefly banned by DHS
Chase. Block. Smash.
The controversial traffic stops federal immigration agents were briefly barred from using have been seen in North Carolina for more than a year, according to one activist group that tracks data. And they often happened in Charlotte.
The Trump administration on Tuesday temporarily barred Immigration and Customs enforcement agents from conducting traffic stops without local law enforcement involvement after agents shot two men in Maine and Texas earlier this month, multiple reports say. Within a day, President Trump took to social media saying traffic stops are “important and effective” and should not stop.
This week, witnesses said agents blocked a man leaving a south Charlotte supermarket parking lot and detained him after breaking his window, The Charlotte Observer reported.
“It’s absolutely inhumane… it is absolutely horrific,” said Melissa Owen, an attorney who represented a Charlotte grocery-delivery driver who said agents sideswiped his car in November. The man, Cristobal Maltos, called 911 to report a hit-and-run and followed. That’s when agents blocked him in, broke his window, slammed him to the ground and said they were “two seconds from shooting me,” Maltos previously told the Observer. (His emergency call, obtained by a Charlotte Observer public records request, was used in an episode of This American Life.)
Owen, a partner at the law firm Tin Fulton Walker & Owen, said that in her 27 years of law practice she’s handled upward of 100 general traffic stop cases. Before Trump became president, immigration agents were never initiating them.
“Never in my career, until cases involved ICE agents, has there been an issue with a law enforcement agency bumping my client’s car, blocking the vehicle with multiple vehicles, breaking the window, grabbing my client out of the car violently ... that’s just not how it’s done,” Owen told The Charlotte Observer during a phone interview Thursday.
Maltos, a 24-year-old U.S. citizen, was charged in federal court with assaulting federal agents with his car. Prosecutors dropped the charges less than a month after they were filed and never presented any evidence to support claims that he assaulted agents.
Federal prosecutors dropped most of the charges originally filed against other people like Maltos. Angel Garcia Martinez, a U.S. citizen and 24-year-old father of two, was charged with the same crimes in federal court, but prosecutors dropped those charges after his federal public defender played an ICE agent’s phone video showing the immigration officers planned to “smash” into him and pushed him to oncoming traffic.
Traffic stops came before “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” when agents swarmed Charlotte for a week in November and tackled people on sidewalks, chased drivers through traffic and smashed several windows. They continued after, too, said Andreina Malki. She works with Siembra NC, which provides legal and political support to immigrants.
“In Charlotte, we see traffic stops every day,” Malki said, and “the traffic stops [in Maine and Texas] are exactly the same as what we see in Charlotte.”
Siembra tracks where federal agents are and who they arrest using social media, tracking and a hotline. Malki told The Charlotte Observer immigration enforcement does not appear to be enforced evenly across the state, and the majority of traffic stops reported to them come from Charlotte.
A spokesperson for ICE in Charlotte could not be reached this week.
“Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, ICE is targeting the worst of the worst,” DHS said in a statement, saying the man arrested outside the Charlotte supermarket had previous arrests for document forgery and did not immediately get out of the car when agents asked him to.
Response from local government on traffic stops
The Observer reached out to Charlotte’s new mayor, Rob Harrington, and city council members Wednesday asking for comment on whether traffic stops by federal immigration agents should continue in the area.
At-large council member Dimple Ajmera said in a statement: “I do not support broad immigration traffic-stop operations that erode community trust and deter people from cooperating with local law enforcement. Enforcement should be narrowly focused on genuine public safety threats, conducted with full respect for constitutional rights and due process, and should never undermine the trust that keeps our communities safe.”
Harrington and the other council members did not respond. City staff spokespeople said in a statement that “the city emphasizes fair and lawful policing … while acknowledging that some residents may feel anxious or uncertain. City leaders continue to affirm that the community’s concerns, safety, and rights are important.”
The Washington Post on Wednesday reported an analysis that found 17 motorists have been shot during immigration enforcement operations under the Trump administration.
Observer reporter Diamy Wang contributed.
