Fear struck several immigrant communities around the Triangle when federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested more than a dozen individual in Orange and Chatham counties earlier this month.

Local non-profit El Centro Hispano is leading the movement in supporting those affected by the raids and held a press conference on Friday where North Carolina’s 4th District Congressman David Price and other local officials met with families of those arrested and expressed their disapproval of the arrests.

Price called the raids “simply unacceptable” and said they are cruel and inhumane.

“My position on immigration is that we need comprehensive reform that lets 11 million people come out from the shadows and obtain legal status and work toward citizenship and that we address the need in our society for good productive citizens working in a way to benefit the community. And I think the vast, vast majority of immigrants are prepared to do just that,” said Price.“I talked to officials in ICE about these North Carolina raids last week and what on earth is going on here, what is the rational for these raids, and we are in the process, of course, of trying to deal with individual cases but also demanding and accounting of what this is all about.”

According to Price, there needs to be a targeted, sensible, understandable and transparent policy of enforcement for arrests because many of the people arrested were not the targets, but just picked up incidentally, Price said they were “at the wrong place at the wrong time.” Those arrested include a local handyman who was arrested after ICE agents knocked on his family’s door searching for a fugitive and claimed they were not going to ask for documentation, according to El Centro Community Engagement & Advocacy manager Eliazar Posada.

“The family allowed them into the house to comply with law enforcement as we talk about – local law enforcement has been very supportive and we are always willing to work with local law enforcement. We also want to say that at this point they were wearing a vest that said ‘police’ so the community members mistakenly thought they were friends of the family, after verifying and looking in every room that that person that they were supposedly looking for wasn’t there, they proceeded to ask for documentation of the family and arrested the husband,” Posada said.

The man’s wife was present at the meeting holding her baby.

According to Posada, the man was the sole breadwinner in the family, leaving his wife as the single provider for her three children with no preparation.

Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle said at the meeting that this type of raid impedes any trust of local law enforcement that the community has worked hard to build up.

“We’re working very closely again with El Centro; we had another ‘Know Your Rights’ seminar last weekend; we had several elected officials there; we had all of the law enforcement there, really getting out the word to the community so that they can understand the difference between local law enforcement that supports them and ICE who they need to be aware of and talking to them about best practices around who to open the door for and who to speak to. So, it’s a constant battle because when something like this happens, suddenly there’s distrust again,” said Lavelle.

Price said he believes the Trump administration is taking the federal immigration policy in a direction that does not reflect well on our country.

“I worked years ago, and I was the chairman of the Homeland Security Appropriations committee, and worked to prioritize enforcement on people who posed a danger to the community – people who had dangerous felonies on their record. We need to know who they are, and they don’t need to be in this country. That is the opposite of what I see the Trump administration doing, which appears to be a totally unfocused, untargeted, indiscriminate policy of arrest and deportation,” Price said.

Chapel Hill Town Council member Michael Parker and Orange County Commissioner Mark Dorosin also spoke at the conference.

El Centro began a GoFundMe with a goal of $30,000 to help pay for the legal fees of the individuals detained by ICE in Orange County and will announce another Know Your Rights seminar within the next couple of weeks.