Several hundred gathered at Moore Square in downtown Raleigh on Tuesday, Nov. 18 to protest ongoing ICE and U.S. Border Patrol raids in Charlotte and the Research Triangle area. (Photo: Galen Bacharier/NC Newsline)
Four U.S. citizens and a visa holder filed a federal class-action lawsuit on Tuesday, accusing the Department of Homeland Security of making immigration arrests without warrants or probable cause, and asking a judge to block the practice in North Carolina.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, says officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection detained people even when there was no clear reason to believe they were in the country illegally or likely to flee, the legal standard required for a warrantless arrest.
The case comes after an increase in immigration enforcement in the state. ICE arrested 3,304 people in North Carolina between Jan. 20 and Oct. 15, 2025 — more than 2.8 times the total during the same period in 2024, according to figures cited in the complaint.
Much of that activity followed a November operation known as “Operation Charlotte’s Web,” which brought hundreds of federal agents to Charlotte and other parts of the state. On one day that month, more than 30,000 students — about one-fifth of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district — were absent, according to the filing.
The complaint also points to a January 2026 memorandum from a senior ICE official, Todd Lyons, that it says encouraged agents to expand their use of warrantless arrests by broadly defining what counts as a risk that a person might flee.
The lead plaintiff, Willy Wender Aceituno, a naturalized citizen who has lived in Charlotte for 25 years, said agents smashed the window of his truck and handcuffed him even though another group of officers had confirmed his citizenship minutes earlier. He was released without charges, the lawsuit says.
Other plaintiffs include Yoshi Cuenca Villamar, a 23-year-old Charlotte native who said he was tackled while working as a landscaper, and Ruben Arguera Lopez, a cook who holds a U visa for crime victims who assist law enforcement. Two other plaintiffs, brothers who are both U.S. citizens, say they were arrested in January without being asked about their status.
The suit names Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and CBP Commissioner Rodney S. Scott as defendants. It seeks a court order barring federal agents from making warrantless immigration arrests in North Carolina.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs told NC Newsline in an email that the lawsuit was filed now because the arrests are continuing, noting that two of the named plaintiffs were detained as recently as last month.
Federal courts elsewhere have recently limited similar tactics. Earlier this month, a judge in Oregon temporarily blocked warrantless immigration arrests that did not meet the legal standard for probable cause, and a federal court in Washington, D.C., issued a similar ruling in December. Lawyers in the North Carolina case are asking the court to do the same.
A DHS spokesperson called the allegations “categorically false” and said immigration enforcement is based on whether a person is in the country illegally, “not their skin color, race, or ethnicity.” The department said its operations comply with the Constitution and federal law.
The spokesperson also said the Supreme Court had “vindicated” the department’s position in a September emergency order involving immigration stops in the Los Angeles area, in which the court allowed similar enforcement tactics to continue while litigation proceeds. The order did not resolve the underlying legal questions.
El Pueblo, an immigrant advocacy group, said videos recorded by neighbors and shared widely online brought attention to the arrests and their impact on local communities. “These incidents were captured by people in the neighborhoods where they happened,” the group said in a statement.
Siembra NC, which monitors immigration enforcement, said it has documented numerous arrests carried out without judicial warrants. “It is encouraging to see action being taken to address what we’ve seen repeatedly — immigration agents relying on warrantless arrests,” said Emanuel Gomez-Gonzalez, a spokesperson for the group.
The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “Federal immigration agents have consistently ignored the law and trampled civil rights in North Carolina,” said Corina Scott, an attorney with the ACLU of North Carolina.
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