Anti-ICE protesters tell NC lawmakers 'we will not go back'

North Carolinians should resist efforts to build a new immigrant detention camp in the state — and push back against other policies meant to ramp up deportations — protesters said Wednesday as several dozen gathered outside the state legislature waving signs, singing and delivering speeches.

A month ago, state lawmakers voted to override Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s veto of a bill requiring many state agencies to cooperate more closely with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and to take new steps to ensure immigrants aren’t receiving state benefits they’re not eligible for.

Republican President Donald Trump made ramped-up immigration enforcement a key part of his 2016, 2020 and 2024 campaigns. In late 2025 immigration raids across North Carolina saw ICE make hundreds of arrests across the state.

Now, newly public documents have shown the Trump administration is considering opening a detention camp in rural northeastern North Carolina to hold immigrants, after court battles and protests in Florida preceded the closure of a large Everglades camp called “Alligator Alcaraz” by Trump as well as his critics.

One opponent of opening a new immigrant detention camp in North Carolina is Iliana Santillán, the founder of immigrant advocacy group Brava NC. She also serves on a new state Latino Advisory Council that Stein created last year as Trump was ramping up ICE raids.

She said at Wednesday’s protest that the conditions in immigrant detention camps are inhumane — with children separated from their parents, people denied medications, and dozens of deaths recorded in the camps since Trump returned to office last year.

“We have a choice about the North Carolina that we want to be,” Santillán said. “Do we become a place that responds to human suffering with more walls, more detention, and more separation? Or do we choose dignity?”

A White House spokesperson didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday. In Raleigh, when lawmakers initially voted a year ago to require closer cooperation between state agencies, state law enforcement officials and ICE, a former police chief serving in the legislature said it was the right move.

“There are all commonsense things that need to be done to make sure we are doing what we can, at the state level, to address illegal immigration and protect our citizens," Rep. Reece Pyrtle, R-Rockingham, said at the time, WRAL reported.

On Wednesday a spokesperson for state House Speaker Destin Hall repeated similar arguments in response to the protests.

"It is simply common sense that law-enforcement agencies should work together to identify and remove individuals who are in this country illegally and commit crimes," Hall spokeswomen Demi Dowdy said. "Thanks to these efforts, dangerous offenders are being taken off our streets, and North Carolina communities are safer as a result."

But also joining Hispanic and Latino activists Wednesday were Black, Jewish or Muslim speakers who drew a direct line from slavery and the Holocaust to America’s current policies of immigration raids and detention camps.

“We will not go back to a time of standing by and watching our neighbors be brutalized, captured and trafficked,” said Karen Ziegler of the group Democracy Out Loud. “We will not go back to a time when family separation was the norm and the law. We are called to be the Underground Railroad now, to be the abolitionists now, to be the resistance now.”

Munir Abdul Hakim, the leader of the Triangle-based group Muslims for Social Justice, said his ancestors were enslaved in Franklin County — a family history that leads him to support immigrants who he said now face the threat of violence or mistreatment as they go to work in North Carolina.

“This is not an immigrant issue,” he said. “This is a working class issue, and a human rights issue. Violently grabbing someone off of a job site with no warrant, no hearing is a threat to everyone's freedom.”

It doesn’t appear the Stein administration or other state officials would be able to stop a possible new federal detention camp, in Hertford County, from opening even if they wanted.

A state prison system spokesperson told WRAL the facility in question is owned by a private prison company, not the state — and that the state is concerned that a new private prison camp opening up could recruit guards and others away from North Carolina’s already-understaffed state prisons.

Ziegler said it’ll be up to the people to stop it.

“I remember growing up and learning about concentration camps in Germany, and I thought, why don't they just bomb the train tracks?” she said Wednesday. “I don't know what it will take to stop this machine. I believe it is peaceful, massive protest.”

In 2025 the state legislature passed a new law requiring county sheriffs and their deputies to work more closely with ICE agents in North Carolina. And last month the legislature passed another bill into law extending similar rules mandating ICE cooperation by state law enforcement agencies, the state prison system and agencies under Stein’s control.

Berger personally sponsored that newest immigration law — a rare move for a member of leadership — last year as he also sought Trump’s endorsement in his March 2026 primary election. He was successful in winning Trump’s endorsement but came up short in the election, which Berger lost to Rockingham County Sheriff Sam Page by 23 votes.

The law begins with a lengthy passage praising Trump and criticizing Stein, saying in part that “with their votes electing Donald J. Trump to be the 47th President of our great nation, the American people and the people of North Carolina clearly communicated their strong desire to create a safer country through increased border security and stronger immigration policies.”

Stein said the benefits piece of the bill was unnecessary since state agencies have always had policies in place to ensure that immigrants in the country without legal authorization are blocked from receiving food stamps, Medicaid, Section 8 housing funds and unemployment checks.

And the portions of the bill requiring law enforcement to work more closely with ICE, Stein said, will harm public safety in North Carolina by taking police away from their regular duties.

But GOP lawmakers said Stein hadn’t done enough to help Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda and needed to be forced to have state prison and law enforcement workers do more. They lacked the votes for months to override Stein’s veto, as Democrats in the state House stood behind the governor. Republicans hold a veto-proof supermajority in the state Senate but not the House.

However, after Stein backed a primary challenger this March against Charlotte Rep. Carla Cunningham, and Cunningham lost her race, she quit the Democratic Party in protest.

Last month Cunningham and another moderate Democrat who lost his primary, Rep. Shelly Willingham, D-Edgecombe, skipped votes. That gave Republicans the numbers they needed to override Stein’s veto of the immigration bill — as well as three other bills cracking down on diversity, equity and inclusion in state agencies, local government and higher education.

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