Blanca Nienhaus, a Graham resident and Mexican immigrant, said she comes from a country where people traditionally are afraid of the police. When she came to the U.S., she did not think the same thing would be true. Yet both herself and other immigrants she knows, despite having documentation, have faced instances around the police where they have been worried for their safety.
One day, Nienhaus was driving home and decided to take a new route through an unfamiliar neighborhood. A police car saw her pull in and started following her, continuing until she pulled into her own driveway of her house. Despite this experience, Nienhaus has continued to use her ability to speak both English and Spanish, her connection to the community and her American citizenship to help advocate for immigrant rights.
"I became part of a minority, which is easy to say, but not easy to live,” Nienhaus said. “People heard that I spoke English, … people started coming to me and asking me things or asking for help or for giving information. So I was able to have each foot on one side of the coin.”
Nienhaus is a member of Fairness Alamance — an organization that was created in response to racial profiling from the Alamance County’s sheriff department to provide support to immigrants. In Dec. 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice sued the sheriff ’s department for illegally targeting Latino drivers, and Fairness Alamance played a large role in helping provide the DOJ evidence.
Alamance County Sheriff Terry Johnson said the sheriff’s department has had a contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since 2007 and has been holding ICE detainees in the county jail since 2012. In 2022, ICE released a press release saying it would no longer use the county’s detention facility for long-term detention, only short periods of custody if it meets applicable standards. This was because of concerns about conditions in the facility. The ACLU of North Carolina released a statement in response to this stating that the detention center for years has raised concerns for them due to its “horrific conditions, reports of abuse, and serious medical neglect at the Alamance County jail.”
This January, the county’s contract with ICE ended and is being renegotiated now, Johnson said.
Not knowing what is coming next is part of what Nienhaus said is anxiety provoking.
"People are scared because of the previous experience and because there are lots of uncertainty, nothing for sure so far,” Nienhaus said. “But people are afraid.”
Nienhaus said in Alamance County, she is used to a sheriff who has been openly against immigration, yet seeing immigration constantly in the federal news is newer. President Donald Trump campaigned on the promise of increased deportations.
In the less than 30 days Trump has been in office, Trump has tried to pass an executive order to block citizenship for children in the U.S. born to undocumented immigrants and has significantly increased ICE enforcement — arresting 7,400 people in nine days, according to ICE’s X account.
Johnson, who has been a partner with ICE for over 10 years, has previously agreed to give ICE 40 out of 346 beds at the detention center, Johnson said. While negotiations are still underway, Johnson said if ICE requests more bed space he could likely provide space at the old county prison unit.
Despite the lawsuit for racial profiling in 2012, Johnson said any immigrants who do not have a criminal record should have no cause for concern. Johnson said this is the current federal government’s policy and is what the county follows.
“There will be no racial profiling by the Alamance County sheriff ’s office,” Johnson said.
Even if immigrants with no criminal record are not the target of the department, getting pulled over or being stopped by a police officer in general can be a nerve racking experience — even with campaigns such as “know your rights,” where people are told to remain silent and wait for a lawyer, Nienhaus said this is easier said than done.
“People get scared,” Nienhaus said. “It is not the same reading in a paper. If somebody, if a police, knocks at your door, … it’s easy to say, but when the people are living in that situation, they just freak out.”
Over ten years ago, the lawsuit against the sheriff ’s department was on law 287g — a law that allowed local law enforcement to begin deportation proceedings, not just federal ICE agents. The county settled this case as it was found the sheriff ’s department was using this law as a reason to specifically target the Latino and Hispanic communities.
The department signed an agreement that it would accept the monitoring of the DOJ and commit itself to best practices. Nienhaus said since this lawsuit she does feel like things have improved a little bit as this lawsuit helped bring attention to instances of racial profiling in the county.
“More people were focused on what they were doing, then they were not,” Nienhaus said. “And little by little, I think things began to calm down.”
For sophomore Edward Hernandez, racial profiling in Alamance County has been a longstanding issue. Hernandez, who grew up in Burlington, said he has had people call him slurs for speaking Spanish in public with his family.
“Even before politics, just in the state of the county we’ve lived in, that Elon is, it’s always been just a thought,” Hernandez said. “It’s not something that it’s always talked about, but it’s always something that’s in the back of our heads.”
Hernandez is the president of Elon’s Latinx Hispanic Union and said some of the goals of the organization is to showcase Hispanic culture, educate others and provide a safe space for members of the Latino and Hispanic communities.
Hernandez said as an organization he feels supported by Elon to be able to have both physical spaces to meet and funding for events, but he would like to see some kind of formal statement from the university on where it stands regarding federal news surrounding immigration.
“From what I’ve heard, Elon hasn’t made any comments or anything specifically, to quote, unquote, support,” Hernandez said. “They’ve just consisted with their general SGA funding, generally giving us spaces to have our events. … that may not be explicitly on the nose for politics, but do bring support to the communities on campus, nothing really has changed.”