Maria Mejia, a philosophy professor at Elon University, first became involved with Siembra NC when she attended a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement verification training at a local church. She worked with organizers to plan a similar community preparedness session at Elon University in May 2025.
“I was connecting with students who were really concerned about this anti-immigration rhetoric, and not just rhetoric, but the raids that were happening,” Mejia said. “I knew that students at Elon wanted to do something, and they were upset about the fact that there weren’t a lot of spaces where this was being talked about.”
Siembra NC was founded in 2017 in response to growing fears about deportation and a gap in support and resources for Latine communities. The nonprofit continues to serve Latines in North Carolina by providing legal defense from abusive employers and landlords, supporting families impacted by ICE, hosting cultural events and more.
Since his first presidential campaign in 2016, President Donald Trump has maintained an anti-immigration stance and pushed to deport those who immigrated illegally to the United States, according to Ballotpedia. This agenda has only accelerated in his second term.
From Trump’s inauguration in January to late June, ICE arrested 1,600 people in North Carolina, according to data provided by request to the Deportation Data Project. In July, North Carolina Public Radio found nearly half of those arrested had no prior criminal convictions, and 20% were arrested solely for being undocumented.
Over 80% of those arrested in North Carolina between January and June were from Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua or El Salvador, and by early June, close to 1,000 people had been deported, according to North Carolina Public Radio.
Mejia has personally connected with local businesses in her hometown of Saxapahaw, North Carolina as part of Siembra’s Fourth Amendment Workplace campaign. The initiative enrolls immigrant-safe workplaces that train staff on their constitutional rights during search and seizure operations and vow to protect their employees — regardless of immigration status — against ICE agents.
To celebrate the campaign, Siembra is hosting Fourth Amendment Workplace celebration events through September. A celebration in Durham on Sept. 6 featured music, tamales, a drag queen performance and speeches from Siembra members who helped plan the event and sign on businesses as fourth amendment workplaces.
“I’m really happy to see people, not only of Hispanic background, but also allies, coming together and helping out,” Siembra volunteer Melanie Loera said. “It just makes me feel so great, especially after everything that’s been going on in the political climate, this is kind of like a breath of fresh air.”
According to the American Immigration Council, 27% of construction workers and 17% of agriculture workers in North Carolina are immigrants, and immigrants contributed $11.4 billion in taxes to the state in 2023.
“North Carolina is dead last when it comes to workers’ rights,” said Maria Peralta, a community organizer for Siembra based in Durham County. “We have been taking on wage theft cases and just trying to organize workers so they feel like they could fight for their wages back, which has been really empowering.”
While Siembra has been largely focused on workplace safety, those raids are not the only danger for immigrants. Traffic stops and immigration check-in appointments are also targets for ICE.
In North Carolina, undocumented immigrants cannot get a driver’s license and it is illegal to drive without a license.
“Even a license checkpoint is something that puts undocumented people in harm’s way,” Mejia said. “The police officer can decide to let that person go, but if they’re undocumented, they’re most likely driving without a license.”
Mejia and Siembra NC emphasize the importance of community to fight back against oppressive governments. Siembra’s We Got Us campaign organizes ICE verification training, know-your-rights training, and direct support to families affected by ICE, but has become quickly overwhelmed with the uptick in deportations and anti-immigration rhetoric.
“All of a sudden, when scary things happen, everyone wants to get involved,” Mejia said. “That’s a really big thing that we see all the time in organizations and activist groups, that it’s really difficult to build capacity.”
Peralta emphasized that the responsibility falls not only on immigrant and Latine communities, but also anyone else who wants change.
“We all have to come together to build a North Carolina that we all deserve,” Peralta said. “We need all hands on deck.”
So Mejia proposed a new approach to offload some pressure. She offered to start providing trainings herself and suggested preparing community leaders to do the same.
“I’m a professor — I yap in front of people all the time. So I thought of the idea of, if you all can train me to lead a training, then we could have more capacity,” Mejia said. “And now they are actually expanding so that other people in other counties and other places can hold their own trainings.”
Through changes, Siembra remains a steady resource for the Latine community in North Carolina and seeks to ensure the state is a comfortable and safe place for immigrants.
“The power lies in the people, and it’s really important for us to acknowledge that,” Loera said. “Not only acknowledge it, but also take it to the full potential that it has, because the more people that unite, the more possibility of change that we have in our hands.”
Mejia encourages more people to get involved in advocacy and to stand up for what they believe in.
“I’m afraid that if we don’t make community organizing a part of our everyday lives, the conditions of oppression are just going to continue getting worse and worse,” Mejia said. “We know when we look at history that any kind of progress or any kind of wins that people have gotten have been won by people being extremely dedicated and organizing and educating each other. We just need to fight for what we want, otherwise things are just going to get increasingly worse.”