The Trump era has been breathing new life into often dormant local politics — and the president’s crackdown on immigrants, in particular, has made resistance to federal immigration enforcement a central issue in some municipal elections. As the increasingly aggressive tactics of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement have come under scrutiny, the question of whether local police should help ICE deport people has taken on new importance in local races. In Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, where residents are heading to the polls next month to choose a sheriff, the question has made the previously obscure 287(g) program a central issue in the campaigns of the incumbent sheriff, who embraced it, and his two challengers, who want to end it. Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act allows local law enforcement agencies to form voluntary partnerships with the federal government to enforce immigration law. Agencies that sign up receive delegate authority to ask people booked into local custody about their immigration status and to hold undocumented individuals for ICE. But 287(g) has been mired in controversy ever since it started in 1996 — in some places, leading to sweeping racial profiling and, in many others, putting a huge drain on local law enforcement resources and damaging police relationships with the communities they serve.

An array of community groups in Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, have come together to make sure this election marks the end of the controversial policy. “The current sheriff has said that he believes the program is helping the community, keeping it safe, and he’s not willing to end it,” said Oliver Merino, an organizer with Comunidad Colectiva, one of the groups fighting the county’s participation in 287(g). “We feel like the best way to get rid of the program is to get a new sheriff, somebody that understands that the program is not working.” Since 2006, when Charlotte signed on to the program, more than 15,000 people have been detained by the sheriff’s department and processed for deportation — many of them over minor infractions and traffic violations, like driving without a license, which undocumented people can’t legally obtain in North Carolina. In fiscal year 2017, there were more than 1,300 “encounters” through the county’s 287(g) program, leading to 288 deportations, according to an ICE spokesperson. In March, 45 groups signed a letter calling on incumbent Sheriff Irwin Carmichael to terminate the county’s participation in the program. “While your office continues to highlight a handful of cases of individuals with serious crimes, the fact is that a great majority of deportations under the 287(g) program are due to minor offenses,” the letter states, listing the stories of local residents seized and deported as a result of the program. “The sheriff’s office is deporting fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters, disrupting and separating families in the process.” Carmichael told The Intercept that there was misinformation “being put out there about the program,” and released a video discussing 287(g). “A lot of folks always say that we are ripping families apart. Again, I always tell everyone, you will never ever encounter this program unless you’re arrested and charged with a crime and brought to our jail,” Carmichael told Fox News in March. “We use this as a tool to identify exactly who we have. … Maybe they’re from a foreign country and maybe they committed murder in a foreign country.” Challenger Garry McFadden told The Intercept that if elected sheriff, he will discontinue the agreement. “287(g) often hindered and complicated my investigations,” the former homicide detective said. “Both the witnesses and victims did not want to come forward to cooperate with the investigation. 287(g) does not create a trusted working relationship between law enforcement and many of the community.” Antoine Ensley, who ran for sheriff twice before, with opposition to the program as a central component of his platform, told The Intercept that he has long argued 287(g) needs to be “dismantled.” “I still believe it to be very bad for Mecklenburg County,” he said. “I believe a significant amount of the public now recognize how divisive and unnecessary this policy is to the business of public safety.” The Democratic primary is on May 8 — but with no Republican challenger, the winner of the primary will be the new sheriff. Early voting is currently underway.

Charlotte is one of the country’s most segregated cities, and one of its most diverse, with fast-growing Latino and Asian populations. Nearly one in six city residents was born abroad. While North Carolina is a major destination for new immigrants, Charlotte is also home to large communities of Southeast Asian immigrants who moved to the U.S. following wars in the region in the 1970s and 1980s. At the time, many were resettled in poor neighborhoods without much support, and some were caught up in the criminal justice system, which, decades later, can put their legal immigration status at risk. “Now, 20, 30 years later, these folks are being pulled out of their families to be sent to countries that they sometimes never lived in,” Cat Bao Le, executive director of the Southeast Asian Coalition in Charlotte, told The Intercept. “It’s a different path, but if you look at the roots, it’s the same as what other communities are facing. It’s over-policing in our neighborhoods that created this.” “It’s up to us to move beyond the thinking that this is just an issue for this community or that community,” she added, noting that the fight over 287(g) brought a range of Charlotte groups together, some for the first time. “We have a critical mass, if we identify what can bring us together.” Charlotte is also home to a large black population that is all too familiar with failed police policies, and the city is in the midst of a political reawakening following the 2016 police killing of Keith Lamont Scott and the large protests that ensued. Those street protests have turned into civic engagement and increased scrutiny of local law enforcement. Advocates calling for an end to 287(g) also criticized Carmichael’s practice of placing teenagers in solitary confinement, and his decision to replace in-person jail visits with video visitation. “We are a very different city,” said Braxton Winston, a protester-turned-Charlotte City Council member, following what people there call the Charlotte uprising. “In terms of who is literally at the table — I’m a prime example of that, but there are so many others whose voices would not have been there at certain points in time.” Today, Winston is one of those leading the charge against the county’s participation in 287(g). “It’s a really bad policy,” he told The Intercept. “When you look at the intent and the cost, not in terms of dollars but harm done to the community, I think it’s pretty clear.” In a city struggling to improve police-community relations, he added, “the relationship is the main part of it. You have to be able to form some kind of trust.” “I think a lot of people do believe that we need comprehensive immigration reform — but this is one of these polices that the federal government have put out there to get a result in place of that reform.”

President Donald Trump signs four executive orders during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security with Vice President Mike Pence, DHS Secretary John Kelly, and other officials on Jan. 25, 2017, in Washington, D.C. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Pool via CNP/AP Images