By ERIK VERDUZCO Associated Press

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Federal officials confirmed Saturday that a surge of immigration enforcement in North Carolina’s largest city had begun as agents were seen making arrests in multiple locations.

“Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens hurting them, their families, or their neighbors,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed.”

Local officials, including Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles criticized such actions, saying in a statement they “are causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty.”

“We want people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to know we stand with all residents who simply want to go about their lives,” said the statement, also signed by County Commissioner Mark Jerrell and Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board member Stephanie Sneed.

Enforcement begins after rumors

The federal government hadn’t previously announced the push. But Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden said earlier this week that two federal officials had told him that Customs agents would be arriving soon. Charlotte is a racially diverse city of more than 900,000 residents, including more than 150,000 who are foreign-born, according to local officials.

Paola Garcia, a spokesperson with Camino — a bilingual nonprofit serving families in Charlotte — said she and her colleagues have observed an increase in U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling people over since Friday.

“Basically what we’re seeing is that there have been lots of people being pulled over,” Garcia said. “I even saw a few people being pulled over on the way to work yesterday, and then just from community members seeing an increase in ICE and Border Patrol agents in the city of Charlotte.”

Willy Aceituno, a Honduran-born U.S. citizen, was on his way to work when he saw Border Patrol agents chasing people.

“I saw a lot of Latinos running. I wondered why they were running. The thing is, there were a lot of Border Patrol agents chasing them,” he said.

Aceituno, a 46-year-old Charlotte resident, said he himself was stopped — twice — by Border Patrol agents. On the second encounter, they forced him out of his vehicle after breaking the car window and threw him to the ground.

“I told them, ’I’m an American citizen,” he told The Associated Press. “They wanted to know where I was born, or they didn’t believe I was an American citizen.”

After being forcibly taken into a Border Patrol vehicle, Aceituno said he was finally allowed to go free after showing documents that proved his citizenship. Aceituno said he had to walk back some distance to his car. He later filed a police report over the broken glass.

An encounter in a front yard

In east Charlotte, two workers were hanging Christmas lights in Rheba Hamilton’s front yard on Saturday morning when two Customs and Border Patrol agents walked up. One agent tried to speak to the workers in Spanish, she said. They didn’t respond, and the agents left in a gray minivan without making arrests.

“This is real disconcerting, but the main thing is we’ve got two human beings in my yard trying to make a living. They’ve broken no laws, and that’s what concerns me,” Hamilton, who recorded the encounter on her cellphone, told The Associated Press.

“It’s an abuse of all of our laws. It is unlike anything I have ever imagined I would see in my lifetime,” the 73-year-old said.

Amid reports that Charlotte could be the next city facing an immigration crackdown, she had suggested the work be postponed, but the contractor decided to go ahead.

“Half an hour later he’s in our yard, he’s working and Border Patrol rolls up,” she said. “They’re here because they were looking for easy pickings. There was nobody here with TV cameras, nobody here protesting, there’s just two guys working in a yard and an old white lady with white hair sitting on her porch drinking her coffee.”

Some businesses close

Local organizations sought to prepare for the push, trying to inform immigrants of their rights and considering peaceful protests. JD Mazuera Arias, who won election to the Charlotte City Council in September, was one of about a dozen people standing watch Saturday outside a Latin American bakery in his district in east Charlotte.

A nearby bakery was closed amid word of the possible immigration crackdown, he said. The government action was hurting both people’s livelihoods and the city’s economy, he said.

“This is Customs and Border Patrol. We are not a border city, nor are we a border state. So why are they here?” he asked. “This is a gross violation of constitutional rights for not only immigrants, but for U.S. citizens.”

President Donald Trump’s administration has defended federal enforcement operations in cities like Los Angeles and Chicago as necessary for fighting crime and enforcing immigration laws.

But Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat with a Republican-majority legislature, said Friday that the vast majority of those detained in these operations have no criminal convictions, and some are American citizens.

He urged people to record any “inappropriate behavior” they see and notify local law enforcement about it.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department had emphasized ahead of time that it isn’t involved in federal immigration enforcement.

___

Associated Press writers Maryclaire Dale in Chicago and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Maryland, contributed.