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Two Charlotte moms have filed claims against the U.S. government for the day their route to a Christmas show intersected with immigration agents and ended with an assault rifle inches away from their faces.
Tatyana Reisini and Kristen Roos say federal immigration agents chased them down a dead-end street, pointed a gun at them, smashed their car windows and falsely imprisoned them at an FBI office while then-commander-at-large Gregory Bovino led the U.S. Border Patrol through Charlotte, carrying out the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement directives, for a week in November.
Someone inside one of the townhomes lining the road took video of the agents surrounding and holding the women at gunpoint. It was reshared through several accounts and got more than 9 million views on the social media platform X, according to the filed complaint. Bovino at the time responded, saying: “Excellent arrests for assault on a federal officer.”
Attorneys with the Southern Coalition for Social Justice sent a notice of claims to the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection on Monday. Within it lies a different story - and a demand for three million dollars.
‘Sowed terror and fear’
The Federal Tort Claims Act allows people to file claims when a federal employee injures somebody or damages property. The letter sent by attorneys Janki Kaneria and Jacob Sussman says immigration agents did both the week they “quickly sowed terror and fear across the city, disrupting daily life” during “Operation Charlotte’s Web.”
Reisini and Roos had two tickets to the Southern Christmas Show - which turns a conference center near Bojangles Coliseum into a winter wonderland with shops and shows - on Nov. 17, 2025. That’s when they learned federal agents were near Eastway Drive.
“Given their concern about their community and because the location was on the way ... they decided to drive in that direction,” the letter says.
While they drove down Central Avenue, they noticed a “dirty car with an out-of-state license plate” they assumed held agents. It did.
Reisini, who was driving her family’s 2019 Acura with Roos in the passenger seat, followed the car into a parking lot off The Plaza. Other drivers did the same and honked their horns and blew whistles - a universal warning sign observers developed as Bovino’s Border Patrol hurled through cities to enforce immigration enforcement demands coming from the Trump administration.
In the parking lot, agents in cars surrounded Reisini’s car, and agents got out and yelled at the women, according to the letter.
“Terrified by the behavior of these uniformed, masked, and armed immigration agents, [Reisini] maneuvered her car away ... Both women were very shaken up by what had just transpired, and they decided to leave the parking lot and head to the Southern Christmas Show.”
Agents followed.
The women called 911, and an operator recommended they pull into a public area like a police station or gas station. So Reisini pulled through a parking lot. Then she kept driving through a nearby neighborhood of townhouses off Kilgo Way.
Agents kept following. Reisini didn’t know she was on a dead-end street.
When she pulled into a random driveway, agents again boxed them in and came up to their door, yelling. This time, one agent pointed his assault rifle nearly flush to the window and at Reisini’s face. Then he banged the tip of the rifle against the glass until it broke. A neighbor across the street captured this on video.
Glass shattered onto Reisini. An empty child’s car seat sat in the back.
“You’re a stellar mom,” an agent said loudly as another zip tied Reisini’s hands behind her back, according to the letter.
She fired back: “I am a stellar mom, thank you very much.”
The New York Times, reporting on the women’s cases and others across the country, spoke to Bovino about the incident. He said he wasn’t concerned about the risk involved with an agent smashing a window with a gun.
“I’m more worried about the officer getting hurt or killed or the public getting hurt or killed, not necessarily the suspect,” he told The New York Times.
Meanwhile, another agent used a tool to break the window on Roos’ side and a neighbor offered to call the women’s husbands. Roos’ husband came, but agents wouldn’t let him talk to anyone before they took the mothers to the FBI office.
There they stayed for four hours before they were given tickets that charged them with assaulting federal agents.
U.S. Attorney Russ Ferguson’s office voluntarily dismissed the charges in March, according to the complaint. The tickets used to charge the women are different from a traditional criminal complaint and are not tracked in the online docket for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina.
Agents violated constitutional rights, letter says
The attorneys’ letter asserts 18 claims the women have as a result of the “extraordinary harm they suffered at the hands of the federal government.”
The attorneys say Roos should receive $1.25 million and Reisini, who was driving the car agents damaged and had bruises from the zip ties, should get $1,250,411.90.
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