At least 12 arrested by ICE Saturday in WNC; hundreds rally in protest downtown

ASHEVILLE - Hundreds of people rallied in front of the Veach-Baley Federal Building downtown Saturday in protest of a U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement operation that netted about a dozen arrests across Western North Carolina earlier in the day.

Immigrant advocate group Compañeros Inmigrantes de las Montañas en Acción, known as CIMA, led the hour-long rally, during which family members of detained immigrants and prominent city and county leaders spoke. The unifying message of the rally — which was planned and organized in a matter of hours — was that the behavior of ICE is unacceptable and will no longer be tolerated.

"These are unjust moves from a rogue agency," said CIMA coordinator Bruno Hinojosa, describing what he referred to as ICE attacks on the Latino community of Buncombe and Henderson counties. "ICE has been given the power to do anything, and they're terrorizing our community."

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Bryan Cox, an ICE spokesman based out of Atlanta, confirmed to the Citizen Times Saturday that the federal immigration agency arrested about 12 people in Buncombe and Henderson counties Saturday morning. Two of those people were arrested in Asheville, he said, while others were arrested in Hendersonville and East Flat Rock.

Cox said his agency has an office in Hendersonville, and therefore "the presence of ICE is nothing out of the norm there." He wouldn't say how many agents are based there, citing security concerns, but he explained that ICE operations are narrow in scope and generally target only "criminal offenders, gang members and other dangerous people."

A woman named Helen — who gave only her first name fearing retaliation from ICE, even as a U.S. citizen — told a different story when she spoke during the rally.

Helen's husband, Carlos, was arrested by ICE on his way to work laying floors Saturday morning when he was stopped by ICE at the Walgreens off Leicester Highway. It was about 7 a.m. when he and his coworker were pulled over by an unmarked SUV driven by ICE agents, Helen said.

Balentin — who for the same reason as Helen only gave his first name — was in the car with Carlos when Carlos was arrested. Balentin, a U.S. citizen, said the ICE officers, whose bulletproof vests bore the federal agency's name, told him and Carlos that they were looking for a Mexican named John at the time.

"How many Mexicans do you know named John?" Balentin said.

In most cases, Cox said, ICE agents have a specific list of targets they're going to arrest, people with some sort of criminal background.

Immigrant advocates such as CIMA's Isle Ramirez say that bar can be fairly low. Some of the people ICE targeted Saturday had only DUIs, she said.

ICE statistics, furnished by Cox, show that the majority of arrests made under the watch of the Atlanta Field Office, which covers the Carolinas and Georgia, were of convicted criminals. Of the 13,551 arrests ICE agents in that three-state area made in Fiscal Year 2017, 67 percent had a criminal record.

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The other 33 percent were cases in which ICE agents came across other people who were in the country unlawfully while searching for their target suspects. That's what Balentin said happened to Carlos when he was pulled over by ICE.

"They said, 'Where are you from?' He said, 'Mexico,' and right then they said, 'All right, you're coming with us,'" Balentin told the Citizen Times Saturday.

He called Helen, who rushed to the scene of the arrest, but by the time she got there, the ICE agents had Carlos in the back of their car and wouldn't let him out. Helen said she told the agents that she and Carlos were working on getting his green card, but she had no proof and her word alone wasn't enough to free her husband.

"They didn't even let me see him," she said, wiping tears from her eyes during an interview with the Citizen Times. "I wanted to see him because Lord knows when I'll see him again."

Though CIMA and other immigrant advocacy groups in Asheville are trying to reach out to all of the families who had a loved one detained by ICE, they've only been able to contact a handful so far, Hinojosa said.

Stories like Helen's are typical, though, according to Hinojosa and other rally speakers, and they show how devastated the Latino community can be by such raids. That was evident on social media Saturday morning, when news of the ICE operations began circulating.

Several members of the Western North Carolina Latino community took to social media to discuss the ICE arrests, posting pictures and in one case video of an arrest.

Predominately Spanish-language Facebook groups Pasa la voz Asheville y alrededores, which in English means Spread the Word, and Nuestro Centro, in English Our Center, were rife with activity regarding the ICE operation Saturday morning. Several people, in posts and in comments, mentioned family members they say have been detained.

The Citizen Times reached out to several such people over Facebook and has yet to hear back.

Hinojosa said he and the other members of his organization have been frantically working to determine what is going on since he began receiving reports of an ICE raid from frantic community members separated from their loved ones Saturday morning.

"Since then, we've been on call nonstop, receiving phone calls from people who can't find their family members who they think have been picked up by ICE," he said.

He said CIMA heard from somebody in the Henderson County Registrar's Office that there are at least seven people being detained in Henderson County. Hinojosa wasn't sure whether those seven people were being detained in the Henderson County Jail or nearby. A Citizen Times call to the Henderson County Registrar was not answered Saturday.

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Allison Nock, a spokeswoman for the Henderson County Sheriff's Office, which runs the county jail, said Saturday that any questions regarding ICE would need to be directed to the federal agency. Nock did, however, say via email that "nobody has been detained by ICE in our facility."

Henderson County jail records, which list the primary reason why each inmate is being detained, corroborate that.

In a statement released Sunday, spokeswoman Natalie Bailey said the Buncombe County Sheriff's Office played no role in Saturday's arrests.

"The Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office has not participated in these operations," according to the statement. "We are not currently holding any immigration detainees arrested from yesterday’s ICE operations in the Buncombe County Detention Facility."

Buncombe County jail records list only one inmate in custody on an ICE hold, and he's been there since August 2017.

Asheville Police Department spokeswoman Christina Hallingse said in a statement Sunday that the department "has not participated in these operations in any manner."

Asheville City Council members Brian Haynes, Vijay Kapoor and Sheneika Smith spoke during the rally at the Federal Building. Buncombe County commissioner Jasmine Beach-Ferrara also spoke out against the ICE arrests.