The New Laws Forcing North Carolina Officials to Report to ICE and The Potential Harm These Laws Create
In the wake of Trump’s re-election, the landscape of immigration has changed – particularly, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have become increasingly more aggressive in finding and detaining immigrants, including individuals who are legally in the United States. However, the legal landscape for immigrants is not only becoming more perilous on a federal level, but also on a state level. Even before the election, North Carolina’s legislature was pushing for laws that would increase compliance with ICE.
Prior to the election, the North Carolina House of Representatives had proposed a bill that would require sheriffs to report anyone they were detaining to ICE if they could not determine whether the detainee was a legal resident of the United States. In September 2024, then-Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill, but in November, the House and Senate overrode the vote, enshrining the bill into state law. Prior to this law, many sheriff’s offices throughout the state, including in the capital of Raleigh, did not cooperate with ICE when arresting individuals, and these offices were in opposition to the bill when it was proposed.
The North Carolina Border Protection Act
Post-election, North Carolina legislators have gone further in their attempts to ensure state officials cooperate with ICE. Earlier this year, some North Carolina Senators put forth a new bill called the “North Carolina Border Protection Act.”Essentially, the bill enables specified state agencies to act as ICE agents. This act touches an array of North Carolina state agencies including the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Adult Correction, the State Highway Patrol, and the State Bureau of Investigation. The bill demands that these state law enforcement agencies determine the immigration status of everyone who comes under their supervision.
In addition to policing the practices of law enforcement agencies, the North Carolina Border Protection Act also seeks to ensure public state colleges and universities cooperate with ICE by banning these institutions from adopting any policies that do not comply with ICE. This would prohibit schools from having policies such as those preventing law enforcement from collecting citizenship or immigration status—lawful or unlawful—from their students. The bill also aims to crack down on state-funded public benefits, demanding that the Office of State Budget and Management check if any of these benefits are being provided to unauthorized immigrants and publicly report their findings. On March 4th, 2025, the North Carolina Border Protection Act passed in the Senate 30-13, and now awaits approval by the House and the Governor.
What Do These Laws Actually Accomplish?
Laws mandating state cooperation with ICE are more than just administrative formalities; these measures can have profound impacts on immigrant communities and the state at large. Such laws require a lot of time and money to be properly carried out, and these investments do not appear to yield any notably positive outcome. Past county-level agreements with ICE have cost local governments over 5 million dollars in the first year, and nearly 20 million dollars in the first three years.
Arguments that policies mandating law enforcement compliance with ICE help with crime control are largely unfounded. To begin with, there is no actual evidence that immigrants are committing crimes at higher rates. In fact, the downward trend of North Carolina crime rates in recent years would suggest the opposite. Research funded by the United States Department of Justice on the effectiveness of agreements between state agencies and ICE found “little evidence that they are effective in achieving their goal of violent crime reduction at a national level.” The research identified no relationship between detentions resulting from state-ICE agreements and subsequent levels of crime.
Rather than helping keep the state safe, laws forcing state officials to report to ICE can be harmful to North Carolinians who are immigrants. Being profiled is a very real fear for North Carolinian immigrants and citizens alike. Emboldening state and local law enforcement officers to work with and as ICE agents is likely to encourage racial profiling, as has already been seen in other states that have enacted local ICE compliance measures. Such policies may very well damage trust between immigrant communities and law enforcement, and could have a chilling effect on crime reporting by immigrants fearful of what might happen to them if they come into contact with police officers who are now required to turn people in to ICE.
Class of 2026, Staff Member