North Carolina shouldn’t have to choose between open borders and unmarked vans | Opinion

Immigration enforcement is an ugly business. It’s never going to look like a ribbon-cutting or Main Street parade.

But what’s happening in Charlotte right now feels foreign in a different way. People are asking whether they should be afraid of federal law enforcement coming to town, and local leaders are parsing rumors about which branch of the U.S. government might show up on our streets.

Somehow, we’ve landed in a place where the menu seems to offer only two choices: pretend the border doesn’t exist, or accept scenes that look like something from another country’s newsreel.

In the middle sits the modest idea that people here illegally who commit violent crimes should be deported — and that the officers doing it ought to look and act like American law enforcement, not a secret police.

That’s essentially the middle ground Gov. Josh Stein tried to stake out in his comments this week. Asked about reports of potential Border Patrol operations in Charlotte, he said that if agents come here to find “violent dangerous drug traffickers and criminals,” the city would “welcome them with open arms.” If they show up masked and unidentified, “wreaking havoc and causing chaos and fear,” North Carolina will be “very concerned.”

That’s reasonable, but think about how strange that is. Somehow, “let’s deport criminals” is now the moderate position.

A new stance for Democrats

It shouldn’t be controversial to say we should enforce the law, and that we should do it in a way that is recognizable as American policing. I’m glad to see Stein say that plainly.

But a big part of the reason we’re here today is what’s happened on the left over the last decade. Urban sheriffs like Mecklenburg’s Garry McFadden have done everything they can to pull back from working with ICE. Stein, for his part, has vetoed bills that would require sheriffs to hold certain inmates for immigration authorities.

The pattern was to distance themselves from immigration enforcement altogether, treating it as something to resist rather than manage.

But resistance doesn’t make the laws disappear. It just changes how they get enforced. When local officials send a long, loud message that they want as little to do with immigration enforcement as possible, it doesn’t result in a humane, orderly system. It creates a vacuum. And vacuums in public safety never stay empty.

That’s how you end up with talk of Border Patrol teams flying in, operating under a cloud of uncertainty, with city leaders and residents trying to figure out whether we’re about to see standard police work or something much more aggressive.

Republican rhetoric

Instead of trying to rebuild that middle, Republicans have mostly reached for sharper rhetoric. House Speaker Destin Hall’s office blasted “liberal Charlotte politicians” for caring more about “rumors of federal officers” than about crime. That’s not particularly helpful, either.

Conservatism at its best doesn’t worship power; it orders it. Immigration laws need to be enforced; a country that shrugs at its own border laws is not a serious country. But how we enforce the law matters.

The result is that the sane middle — enforce the law in a steady, transparent way — has been neglected so long it almost feels radical when someone re-discovers it.

That’s where my frustration with Stein comes in. I was glad to hear him finally stake out the middle ground. We should welcome targeted enforcement against dangerous people, and we should reject anonymous, chaotic tactics that erode public trust.

I just wish more Democratic leaders had been willing to say that sooner.

Ideally, a Democratic governor would say clearly and consistently that immigration laws will be enforced in North Carolina, especially against violent offenders — and that state and local officials are expected to cooperate in that.

That would be paired with Republican leaders insisting that enforcement be carried out the right way: coordinated with local law enforcement and done in a way that looks like policing in a constitutional country, not a raid scene from cable news.

Instead, everyone talks past each other, and the rest of us are left with a strange, uneasy feeling that when federal law enforcement comes to town, we’re supposed to either panic or celebrate, depending on which team we’re on.

I don’t have the space in this column to try to solve America’s immigration debate. But if there’s a way out of this, I suspect it starts with something very simple. To say, at the same time and without apology, that our immigration laws will be enforced — and that we will not enforce them with masks, mystery and fear.

That shouldn’t be a controversial position. It should be the normal one. The fact that it isn’t tells you exactly how far off course we’ve drifted.

Contributing columnist Andrew Dunn is the publisher of the Longleaf Politics newsletter, which offers thoughtful analysis of North Carolina politics and policy from a conservative perspective. He can be reached at andrew@longleafpol.com.

This story was originally published November 13, 2025 at 7:26 AM.