Immigration debate is uneasy clash of fact, opinion

Mya Alderman, Madison McKenna, Miles Cali, Lilly Smiley, Nick Green | GNP contributors

For Pitt County, the hurricane of immigration crackdowns hasn’t made landfall … at least not that’s publicly known.

When ICE swept into Charlotte on Nov. 15 and then moved into Raleigh, social media accounts blew up among Greenville citizens with alleged sightings of ICE agents across the city. None of the sightings were officially verified. ICE didn’t respond to the Greenville New Project’s inquiries.

GNP spent the past four months looking into the local impacts of the national immigration crackdown that started in January. It found ICE “detainer” notices on non-US citizens being held in the county’s detention center on matters unrelated to immigration.

It also found that few people were willing to talk about the immigration crackdown in general or specific to Immigration and Customs Enforcement sweeps.

As an example, when GNP asked about the potential impact on ECU’s international students, Jon Rezek said, “I’m a little hesitant to address this question as an administrator because of the state of North Carolina’s neutrality rules.” He’s ECU’s assistant vice chancellor for Global Affairs.

The big picture

For nearly 250 years the United States has been the “shining city on a hill,” as colonial preacher John Winthrop called the Massachusetts Bay Colony in a 1630 sermon, and as President Reagan imagined the country in his 1989 farewell address. A land of opportunity and hope for the “tired, poor, [and] huddled masses”—a promise made in the Statue of Liberty’s iconic inscription.

Now, those same masses are being told to pack their bags. Apparently, the immigrant’s dream of a better life only had a temporary visa.

Just in the past five years, more than 11 million people immigrated to the US, by the Pew Research Center’s count. Immigrants have shaped the country for generations, but their presence also has sparked deep partisan-political divides.

One of the most vocal groups in this debate is the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR. It is a non-partisan organization that analyzes immigration policies and works to minimize the effects of uncontrolled immigration.

Ira Melman, FAIR’s media director, claims illegal immigrants have a negative effect on every sector of the US. “You're talking about a population anywhere from 18-20 million people," he said.

The Center for Migration Studies puts that number at 11.7 million for 2023.

Immigrants “affect our schools, healthcare facilities, labor force, and how our tax dollars are spent,” said Melman.

The claim that immigrants are a fiscal drain is debatable, “even as the research literature and thinking among economists has been quite clear,” the Migration Policy Institute says in a 2024 report. There is a “strong body of research and consensus by most economists that … immigration, on balance, is a net positive for the US economy,” it says.

Still, focusing narrowly on one facet or the other of the issue is to miss the bigger picture, the institute says.

Local Impacts

While immigration enforcement has intensified across the country, North Carolina saw its own version of that story unfold in Charlotte and Raleigh in November. But for Pitt County, the only thing that has arrived so far is uncertainty.

Sgt. Lee Darnell says the heightened national enforcement hasn’t changed day-to-day operations at the Pitt County Sheriff’s Department.

Within the first six months of 2025, 10 non-US citizens in the Pitt County Detention Center were reported to ICE, according to numbers GNP analyzed from the Deportation Data Project. All were male and citizens of Mexico and Central American countries.

In 2024, the detention center held 26 non-citizens that the sheriff’s office reported to ICE. Two were female, and all but one were citizens of Mexico and countries in Central and South America. One was Egyptian.

Darnell said that every time someone is booked into the detention center, their names are entered into the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) to check for warrants. The same NCIC process is repeated prior to the release of a detainee.

“Occasionally, ICE may have them listed as needing to be detained,” said Darnell. “In the case that an ICE detainer is in place, we reach out to ICE for confirmation.”

ICE then has two hours to confirm that it intends to pick up the detainee, and 48 hours in which to pick them up.

Economy Impacts

The effects of immigration crackdowns aren’t just seen at the local detention center, they could show up in paychecks, tax revenue loss and local businesses.

In North Carolina, undocumented residents paid roughly $692 million in tax revenue in 2022, says the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. That means that if 10% of them were to be deported, the state could face up to $69 million loss in state and local tax revenue.

According to the NC Department of Agriculture and Customer Services, the state’s agriculture and agribusiness industry marked itself as an $111.1 billion industry in 2024, and around 27% of the agriculture workforce in North Carolina is made up of migrant workers.

The US Department of Agriculture put the number farms in Pitt County at 367, and together they cover over 151,000 acres. The county’s ag businesses alone produced over $366.7 million in crops, the USDA says.

The USDA put the number of migrant farm workers across North Carolina at 19,323 in 2022. They arrive on temporary work visas. ECU Health says in a 2024 web article that it provided health services to over 2,000 migrant farm workers in its east North Carolina service region.

Then there is the matter of how undocumented employees are paid. “If companies are paying illegal immigrants cash under the table, they can charge less for their service because the company wouldn’t have to pay federal taxes on their employees,” said Dr. Nick Rupp, an ECU economics professor.

GNP found no publicly available evidence of this in Pitt County.

FAIR’s Melman argues that illegal immigration in the US extends further than wages and pricing. “Even if they (illegal immigrants) pay taxes, they generally earn low wages, and in return pay less taxes,” he said. “This means other citizens have to pay for their healthcare, their children's schooling, roads they use, et cetera, in their taxes.”

But according to the Cato Institute, immigrants consume 21% less welfare and entitlement benefits than do natural and naturalized citizens.

Melman also said that “in a system of subsidized labor, employers reap the benefits, and everyone else ends up paying for it, whereas workers that are paying on-book taxes could work for higher wages, earning more money and contributing further to the economy.”

According to the National Law Employment Project, employer sanctions make it illegal for employers to hire workers who are not legally authorized to be employed. There is no public evidence of illegal hiring practices in Pitt County.

Fear in the community

This January, as Donald Trump took office again as president, anxiety began to spread through Pitt County’s Hispanic community. One way it manifested was through an increased but temporary absenteeism among Hispanic schoolkids, said Tom McClellan, a spokesperson for Pitt County Schools.

Parents were afraid to send their children to school for fear that no matter their immigration status, they or their children could be detained and deported by ICE.

It also manifests as a fear of reaching out to local law enforcement in general, said sheriff’s Sgt. Darnell.

Because of this, the Pitt County Sheriff's Office is working to build stronger relationships and ensure safety for everyone in Pitt County. “We hold ourselves to a high standard so that the public can trust us,” said Darnell. “Our citizens mean everything to us, and we simply cannot fail them.”

Immigration policies in Pitt County are not limited to enforcement actions and also affect the broader student population, including international students.

ECU’s international student body represents 73 countries. Those students hold F-1 and J-1 visas, but they serve different purposes. The F-1 visa is for students in full-time academic or language programs.

For example, an international student attending a college, university, high school or language program that has been officially recognized by the government. The J-1 visa is for student exchange visitors, often a part of US government or institutional exchange programs.

ECU’s Office of Global Affairs oversees the immigration compliance of the university’s international students.

Rezek, the assistant vice chancellor for Global Affairs, said that rule changes have been proposed to all types of visas, and there is still a lack of clarity if these may or may not be implemented.

“There is uncertainty around what the final rules/policies/guidelines will be in the higher education space,” he wrote in an email to GNP. “This uncertainty has generated a good deal of anxiety and concern among our international student population.”

Alderman, McKenna, Cali, Smiley and Green produced this story for the Fall 2025 course, In-Depth Reporting.