Immigrants, advocates warn against NC bill cracking down on undocumented residents

As North Carolina lawmakers consider whether to give immigration powers to state law enforcement, advocates for immigrants are saying a similar law recently enacted in Florida is harming North Carolina families.

Republican legislative leaders, however, say North Carolina voters made it clear in the last election that they want the government to crack down on illegal immigration.

The Senate passed Senate Bill 153 on Tuesday despite the opposition of the Democratic caucus. The measure could go before the state House as early as next week.

Gathered on Wednesday morning in Raleigh, advocates said five undocumented workers from Winston-Salem were detained last month in Florida. It came just days after Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Florida, signed a similar proposal into law.

On Wednesday, advocates said the men were headed home to North Carolina from a job site in Florida, when state police pulled over the van they were in. The men were handed over to federal immigration officials and taken to detention facilities.

Cynthia Bautista, who is married to one of the detained men, Juan Rojas, said she and her husband were brought to the U.S. as children. She has Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals [DACA] protection, but he was not eligible. The couple has four sons younger than 18, all U.S. citizens.

Bautista said her husband "has no criminal record and has never broken any laws," and has no family in Mexico.

"All I ask is for compassion," Bautista said through an interpreter. "We are human beings. We are not criminals, we are not bad people. The only thing that we are doing is providing a better future for our children."

Kelly Morales, a director at Hispanic adovacy group Siembra NC, said the same thing could happen here if the state enacts the bill.

"What they want us to believe is that they are going after criminals," Morales said. "And, what we're actually seeing is that it is families that are being separated, and that is the impact, without discrimination of who has a criminal record," Morales said.

Morales called on House Speaker Destin Hall and other state House lawmakers to stand against the measure.

Hall told WRAL News he hasn’t read the bill yet, but he agrees with the basic concept.

"If we don't have a border, we don't have a country," Hall said. "And, I think that anything that we can do to help our federal law enforcement partners deal with illegal immigration, we should do that."