CHARLOTTE — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its law enforcement partners arrested 24 people in a targeted enforcement operation in the Charlotte area, ICE said in a news release Tuesday.
The operation ran from March 1 to March 8.
Suspect names were not released. According to ICE, the charges from those arrested included 13 aggravated felonies or other violent offenses, three illegal firearms or weapons offenses, two MS-13 gang member affiliation cases, one assault on a federal officer, five property crimes and 11 DWI charges.
According to ICE, six of the people had active immigration detainers that were not honored by the Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office. ICE says the agency is looking for 18 people who also had detainers that were not honored.
“ICE has been unable to locate those individuals, and they remain at large and pose a potential danger to the community,” a spokesperson for ICE said in a news release. “These aliens could have been safely and efficiently transferred into ICE custody if their detainers had been honored.”
ICE and Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden disagree over how detainers are followed in Mecklenburg County. McFadden says he is following the law by holding people for 48 hours per the detainer’s request. However, ICE has criticized McFadden for not calling them before the person is released. ICE has not picked up any people with a detainer on them in the Mecklenburg County Jail, according to McFadden.
In an email to county commissioners, McFadden said ICE’s detainer holds come at a county taxpayer expense. McFadden says 163 people have had detainers placed on them at the jail since Dec. 1. At $398 per hold, he says they have cost taxpayers $64,874.
Channel 9 reached out to McFadden for a comment.
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