On a recent Sunday, Argenis Eduardo Torres Rosales joined other parents and children for a day outdoors at Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina. Rosales was sitting in his car when immigration and customs (ICE) agents approached him, his aunt said.

By late afternoon, he and 12 others had been detained and separated from their families, including a father whose wife and children were stranded on the side of the road with no signal in the forest because she didn’t have a driver’s license.

Andreina Malki, defense manager for Siembra NC, a local advocacy organization, grew up hiking and swimming around the forest.

“It’s a sacred place to me,” she said. “What they did to families who were probably experiencing that same communion with nature … to have it desecrated by violent and cruel law enforcement activity is heartbreaking.”

The raid came after the Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly voted to override Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s veto on SB 153, which requires state law enforcement agencies to collaborate with ICE. In a statement to The 19th, ICE confirmed that the agency worked with the Forest Service to arrest 13 people on July 26.

On the first Saturday after the raid, a group of over 100 people gathered for a prayer vigil at a nearby town in Caldwell County. There, questions immersed in confusion and fear swirled around the community: Are forest rangers ICE agents now? Will this happen at other parks?

Malki and Rosales both said that a partnership between the Forest Service, ICE and local law enforcement felt shocking — and a very intentional way to make people feel less safe.

“We never expected ICE to go there,” Wuendy Rosales told The 19th. The operation, she added, felt like “a trap” because the local enforcement knew the area was frequented by the Latino community.

Comment “read” and we’ll DM you a link to the full article.

✍️: Jenae Barnes, climate reporter
📸: Getty Images