Charlotte Police officers provide security in the perimeter where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were earlier conducting operations in Charlotte, North Carolina, on November 16, 2025. Federal immigration officers began immigration enforcement operations in Charlotte on November 15, they confirmed in a statement. “We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed,” Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. US President Donald Trump has made deporting undocumented immigrants a key priority for his second term, after successfully campaigning against an alleged “invasion” by criminals. (Photo by Peter Zay / AFP) (Photo by PETER ZAY/AFP via Getty Images)
By C. Douglas Golden November 20, 2025 at 5:37am
When can you not call an invasion an invasion? When it’s politically incorrect, of course.
But numbers are numbers. And the numbers are in after Immigration and Customs Enforcement began conducting operations in Charlotte, North Carolina: Tens of thousands of students were missing from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools on Monday, the first day of Border Patrol’s deployment there.
This amounted to over half of students in several schools, especially where the majority of students were Hispanic.
According to WFAE-FM, the city’s school authorities issued a final number of 30,399, 10,000 absences more than it had initially calculated.
The data variances, school officials said, were common and a result of either including Pre-K students or students retroactively marked absent from tardy for not meeting the required number of instructional minutes.
This is more than double the number of last Monday. Moreover, it represents about 20 percent about the total enrollment.
From WFAE:
At Sterling Elementary School, where more than 500 of the school’s 700 students are Hispanic, only about 34% of students were listed in attendance. That was the lowest attendance rate out of any elementary school. Other elementary schools with attendance rates in the 30s included Montclaire Elementary School and Nations Ford Elementary School.
At the majority-Hispanic Garinger High School, nearly half the student body was reported absent.
The North Carolina Association of Educators and its chapter in Charlotte released a statement Monday night about reports of high absences and is calling on CMS to create a “CMS-wide communication command center” to allow schools to let parents know their kids are safe and to respond to community needs.
However, there were reports — like from this teacher — that three-quarters of his class (mostly Hispanic) were out of school on Monday:
🚨#BREAKING: A Charlotte NC elementary teacher has just admitted on live TV that of his classroom of 16 students, only 4 showed up to school after immigration raids in the city.
The school district is now confirming that 21% of all students did not show up.
This is insane… pic.twitter.com/5TkS3ykXUa
— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) November 19, 2025
If you think that this is something that Republicans or President Donald Trump’s administration is lamenting, you’re wrong — with the Department of Homeland Security noting the differences in traffic patterns and a two-word message:
You’re welcome. https://t.co/exofytTy8E
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) November 19, 2025
GOP Rep. Mark Harris of North Carolina, meanwhile, told Fox News’ Will Cain that “you can just look at it on its face” and realize that there’s a problem going on “in the whole Charlotte-Mecklenberg area.”
How come 21,000 students in Charlotte didn’t show up for school since Border Patrol arrived?
If you are here legally, then there is nothing to be afraid of.@WillCainShow pic.twitter.com/dVc5ujv2SC
— Rep. Mark Harris (@RepMarkHarrisNC) November 18, 2025
Indeed, the question raises itself: How can you call this anything other than an invasion when tens of thousands of students in one American city alone stay out of the classroom because of the fact that the Border Patrol is conducting operations in the city?
Should schools be forced to provide ICE with the addresses and parents’ names of all students trying to avoid law enforcement?
The number of illegal immigrants that entered under Joe Biden’s administration is, charitably, in the low eight figures. We are told that ICE and DHS deporting these people is somehow inhumane — but what about the taxpayers and parents of Charlotte-Mecklenburg? Don’t they have a reasonable expectation that kids who are legally here are the ones getting their tax dollars, not people who poured into the country during a border crisis manufactured by cynicism and ineptitude?
What absolutely none of those protesting ICE can explain is why the law suddenly doesn’t apply to this one group of people. That’s because they’re intellectual toddlers. They want what they want, and they don’t care what it means to other people. Feelings are more important than hard facts, easy sentimentality more important than looking at what that sentimentality costs them and everyone else. No wonder they keep on losing in the court of public opinion.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture
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