At least 10 people were arrested or detained Thursday evening during a license checkpoint near N.C. Highway 904 and Pireway Road in Tabor City, according to the immigrant rights group Siembra NC. Witnesses say Latino drivers were asked where they were born, and passengers who couldn't produce citizenship documents were questioned about their immigration status and, in some cases, detained.
The checkpoint ran between roughly 5:30 and 7 p.m. Thursday, according to NC Newsline, which reported that people who couldn't produce state identification were arrested on the spot. Two witnesses told the outlet they saw Latino men lined up along the roadside with their hands bound in zip ties.
Javier Carbajal, who was driving home with coworkers after a shift, told the outlet he handed over his driver's license only to be ordered out of his car and patted down by a sheriff's deputy. A passenger in his vehicle was arrested after failing to produce documents. “We are electricians. We were just coming home after a long day of work,” Carbajal said, adding that he watched multiple other people loaded into a van during the stop.
Families Struggle to Locate Detainees
In the aftermath, families told the outlet they could not find some of the detained individuals at detention centers in Onslow, Columbus and New Hanover counties. Siembra NC says it is continuing to document Thursday's arrests and is still trying to determine where detainees were taken and which agencies were involved.
The group also reported that at least three people were moved into ICE custody during a similar Tabor City checkpoint earlier this month, suggesting Thursday's operation was not an isolated incident. The Columbus County Sheriff's Office declined to confirm either the checkpoint or the arrests, telling the outlet it could not release information because the matter was part of an ongoing investigation.
How a Sheriff's Office Gained Street-Level Immigration Authority
The sheriff's office is able to conduct this kind of enforcement because it participates in the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's 287(g) task force, which allows local deputies to carry out certain federal immigration enforcement duties under ICE supervision. According to Enlace Latino NC, Columbus County's so-called Task Force Model agreement with ICE was finalized between September and October 2025 — the most aggressive form of 287(g) partnership, extending federal immigration enforcement powers beyond jail settings into everyday encounters like traffic stops and checkpoints.
That agreement followed an earlier, narrower deal: the sheriff's office had signed a 287(g) Warrant Service Officer agreement in March 2025, after the federal government had denied the county's initial application when it first sought to participate around 2007, per The Guardian. Columbus County was among six local North Carolina law enforcement agencies that signed Task Force Model agreements between September 2025 and March 2026, introducing street-level immigration enforcement authority to the state for the first time, Enlace Latino NC reported.
Questions Over Checkpoint Legality
North Carolina law sets strict limits on how checkpoints like this one are supposed to operate. Under N.C.G.S. § 20-16.3A, agencies running checking stations must follow a pre-designated written policy establishing a standardized, non-discretionary pattern for stopping vehicles, according to the North Carolina General Assembly's own statute. The law's subsection (b), as detailed by FindLaw, further specifies that officers may only detain a driver for further investigation if reasonable suspicion of a motor vehicle or other legal violation develops during the initial stop.
Whether the Tabor City checkpoint adhered to that framework, including whether the sheriff's office maintained a compliant written policy for the operation, remains unclear. It's also not yet known where all of Thursday's detainees are currently being held or what specific charges, if any, have been filed.
Part of a Broader Statewide Shift
The Tabor City checkpoint arrives amid a broader statewide expansion of mandatory cooperation between local and state police and federal immigration authorities. House Bill 10, which took effect December 1, 2024, already requires all 100 North Carolina county sheriffs to determine the legal status of individuals jailed for specified offenses and honor 48-hour ICE detainer requests, according to the ACLU of North Carolina.
More recently, North Carolina lawmakers passed Senate Bill 153 over a gubernatorial veto in June, expanding mandatory ICE cooperation requirements to state-level agencies including the State Highway Patrol and State Bureau of Investigation, per 88.5 WFDD. Columbus County, a rural county of roughly 50,140 residents along the South Carolina border where Hispanic or Latino residents make up an estimated 5.6% to 6.8% of the population according to U.S. Census Bureau data, sits at the center of that shift. Tabor City itself, with about 3,781 residents as of the 2020 Census and a Hispanic or Latino population of roughly 8%, has historically relied on agriculture and tobacco farming that use immigrant labor.
Siembra NC, a statewide grassroots organization founded in 2017 to organize working-class Latino communities and advocate for immigrant and labor rights, says it is continuing to press for answers about who was detained Thursday and where they were taken. For now, families in Columbus County are left searching detention center rosters, hoping to locate relatives who went missing after what began as a routine drive home from work.
