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I'm Nick Craig. Good morning to you. We start with an interesting story this morning out of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. And an undercover investigation conducted by Accuracy in Media that is discussing a diversity, equity, and inclusion renamed, reorganized, and recalibrated. That's what an administrator at the University of UNC Charlotte said officials are doing in the wake of the UNC Board of Trustees' policy decision to slash diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
We've got to take a step back to 2024, April of that year, when the Board of Governors voted to amend DEI policies on campuses statewide to maintain what they called institutional neutrality.
However, undercover footage from Accuracy in Media released earlier this week exposed a university administrator explaining how officials skirt the DEI ban.
Furthermore, the group says that they have additional footage from roughly six different UNC campuses showing a similar story. UNC Charlotte assists Assistant Director of Leadership and Community Engagement, Jaque Sanders, was caught on hidden camera admitting that the university continues DEI work despite the state ban. In the back-and-forth exchange with this undercover journalist, the journalist asks: So, equity work is still happening here. She responds by saying, I can't say that, but we've renamed it, we've revised it, and we've recalibrated it, so to speak. In the video, she explains that front-facing DEI positions don't exist, but rather they are using opportunities to do the work in a covert manner, saying, quote, we just finesse the language.
That's the word of the year. We do work that is covert. When a reporter tried to confront the university's provost for comment, she had no interest in that. She ran away without answering any questions. With that footage, it has sparked some significant backlash online, with state and federal leaders reacting pretty strongly to that.
Senate leader Phil Berger, the Republican out of Rockingham County, who's also the leader of the North Carolina Senate, said, quote, DEI, no matter what name or acronym you use, doesn't belong in education. The North Carolina has already taken corrective steps to address this by passing a Senate Bill 558, a bill I filed to eliminate DEI from the UNC schools and community colleges. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division reacted to the video as well, saying simply, is that so? In response to the video being published, she's been in the news this week as well for announcing, of course, that the Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against North Carolina and the North Carolina State Board of Elections for failure to maintain an accurate voter list in violation of the Help America Vote Act.
So those were just two of the reactions coming in that we were watching. Another one coming in. From an individual who is currently on the UNCW or excuse me the UNC Charlotte Board of Trustees, Woody White, who spent time as a North Carolina state senator as well, had this to say, quote, this is disappointing to see. I worked closely with other members of our board and the system office to repeal and replace DEI policies system-wide in May of 2024. The UNC System Board of Governors directed each institution to implement the new policy, eliminate spending on DEI, and report compliance by September the 1st.
That was, of course, last year. We expected all institutions to fully comply, but suspected some would stealthily attempt to rearrange job descriptions and shift personnel, but not undertake what was intended, which was a full uprooting of discriminatory practices and diverse doctrines with a return to institutional neutrality. I will be asking our system office to make a formal inquiry about the things said in the video and expect that UNC Charlotte will be forthcoming in a response. Those were the social media comments from a UNC Board of Trustees, a UNC Governor Board of Trustee member, Woody White.
So, all of this really sparked a late Wednesday night into the day yesterday.
However, we did get an update pretty late yesterday afternoon from UNC Charlotte. They released the following statement: quote: UNC Charlotte is aware of a video circulating on social media that shows an employee making statements that suggest that the university is failing to uphold DEI-related policies and laws. The employee's statements were inaccurate and do not reflect the university's actions. UNC Charlotte continues to uphold both the letter and the spirit of the UNC system policy. Policy and all federal and state laws.
The individual featured in the video had no policymaking authority, no role in compliance matters, and was not authorized to speak on these issues. Following an internal review, the individual is no longer employed by UNC Charlotte. The statement continues by saying UNC Charlotte takes the statements and the assertions made by the former employees seriously. The university, led by the Division of Student Affairs, in partnership with the Office of Legal Affairs, will conduct a swift and thorough review to ensure that all employees understand and are adhering to applicable policies and laws.
So, UNC Charlotte acting in what can only be described as a very swift manner, dealing with the individual in this video. We've got the full video this morning, the full back-and-forth exchange. It's over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. The headline: DEI disguised undercover footage shows UNC officials ignoring ban. We've got, again, those details on our website, CarolinaJournal.com, where it's now 5-11, News Talk 1110, 993, WBT.
Discussions about illegal immigration have been a very hot topic across the United States and here in North Carolina over the last couple of months. We've brought you some of those stories right here on the Carolina Journal News Hour to get some details on a very disturbing story out of Garner, North Carolina, back over the last couple of months. Carrie Carswell, CarolinaJournal.com, joins us this morning on the news hour. Carrie, thanks for the time this morning. Walk us through some of these disturbing details out of Garner.
That's right.
So in April in Garner, three masked assailants broke into a home and duct taped. a man and abducted his wife and eleven month old daughter. They then took the wife and daughter and dropped her and the daughter off in Wake Forest. And a resident in Wake Forest called nine one one the next morning to alert that the people had shown up on her home, and they were all found safe and unharmed. It's obviously a pretty scary story that you're describing there.
For folks that are listening in our Charlotte area this morning, how far is Garner from Wake Forest? I mean, how far did they travel in this kidnapping that took place? That is likely about an hour or maybe over an hour.
So I mean, this poor baby was really scared, I would imagine. And of course, the mother was, of course, terrified. And to find these people just showing up at a Wake Forest resident the next morning had to have been really terrifying. Walk us through as it relates to the immigration status of these three individuals that you described as Mexican nationals. Do they have any criminal rap here in the United States?
What's going on with them? That's right.
They're all suspected to have entered the country illegally, and some of them do have prior care. Crimes, felonist crimes. Their defense attorney, James Payne, says that this should not be a federal case, even though they are breaking federal law by entering the country legally. asserts that it is an overreach by the federal government, saying that there was no evidence or no clear evidence of interstate commerce, which would meet the threshold to make this a federal crime. Although there is some evidence that there was communication via cell phone across state lines.
And all three of these assailants are held on ICE detainers currently, meaning that once they get through their criminal procedures, they are subject to deportation by ICE.
Well, and I'm glad you bring up that ICE detainer part of it. That has been a pretty major discussion in North Carolina over the last couple of years. You had the General Assembly just a few years ago changing the law to require sheriffs to uphold those ICE detainers if the feds do come in and request somebody to continue to be held. Did that happen in this case? Or is this a situation where a judge or a district attorney let these individuals off while there was an active ICE investigation ongoing?
It seems that in this case, ICE is partnering with the local and state law enforcement to step in because of their immigration status. And even though their defense attorney holds steady that this should not be a federal occurrence or federal crime, it seems as though ICE is stepping in to partner with law enforcement in this case. Kerry, in your article this morning over at CarolinaJournal.com, you've got some details about Operation Take Back America. Can you briefly explain to our audience this morning what that is and how that rolls into a story like we're talking about this morning? Yes, so Operation Take Back America was an initiative for the Trump administration launched by the Department of Justice.
It really just focuses on illegal. Immigrants in the country that are committing violent crimes and that pose a threat. to Americans. And while the Trump administration has a fierce crackdown on deporting anybody who enters the country illegally, they are focusing solely, not just solely, but focusing on people who pose a threat to the American people. And I guess it would be safe to say at least in this story when you've got three individuals breaking into a house, kidnapping a couple of people, as you noted at the top, duct taping a guy and taking his family away, seems like it would be fair to say that it rises to that level in this case, Carrie.
That's exactly right. Yes. And these criminals, the Trump administration is working really hard to make sure that these criminals are taken out of our country. And the Operation Take Back America is to restore safety in our communities. It's a great update this morning.
We appreciate the time. You can read more details on Carrie's story by visiting our website, CarolinaJournal.com. It is Ryan Seacrest here. There was a recent social media trend, which consisted of flying on a plane with no music, no movies, no entertainment. But a better trend would be going to chumba casino.com.
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We've got an update on an international story we were tracking yesterday morning as it relates to tariffs. If you joined us yesterday and really followed any news coverage yesterday, you were probably aware that a three-judge panel here in the United States has blocked President Donald Trump's attempt to roll out reciprocal tariffs on many nations across the country.
Well, yesterday, a U.S. appeals court reinstated the Those tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on Mexico, Canada, and China after that federal trade court blocked them just one day previously. The three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of International Trade found Wednesday that the administration had exceeded its authority by imposing the tariffs on the three largest trading partners to the United States. Yesterday, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit granted an emergency appeal for the Trump administration to reinstate those tariffs, at least for the time being.
The administration had invoked the tariffs under provisions of the International Emergency Economic Power Act, but the Trade Court said that that did not apply to tariffs. With that, however, this Appeals Court Did in fact rule in favor of the Trump administration. Details a little bit sparse as to what exactly this is going to mean going forward, but at least temporarily those tariffs will stay in place. There was a 10-day timeline that the U.S. Court of International Trade started on Wednesday with those international tariffs.
However, that has now been paused as a higher court has stepped in. We'll keep an eye on the details right here on the Carolina Journal NewsHour. Another story we have been tracking throughout the week is dealing with a lawsuit from the federal government against the North Carolina State Board of Elections. This all surrounds the passage of the Help America Vote Act, HAVA, which passed the Congress and was signed by President George Bush in 2002. It was intended to highlight the importance of election integrity in the United States.
However, North Carolina's failure to adhere to those requirements of the legislation and the bill is now under scrutiny. At issue is the requirement to include the last four digits of a social security number or at least a driver's license number for each new registered voter. For a time, North Carolina failed to get those HAVA numbers on forms despite federal law. Jay Delancey, the executive director of the Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina, told us in an exclusive interview this week, quote, we are hopeful that the DOJ will force the North Carolina election administrators to follow the law and remedy all of these registrations that lack any sort of personal identifying information. The suit accuses the election board of failing to maintain an accurate voter list and violating the federal Help America Vote Act, HAVA.
It specifically references the election board's use of a voter registration form that did not require prospective voters to provide a driver's license number or the last four digits of a social security. number. Going back to some of the comments from Jay Delancey with Voter Integrity Project of North Carolina, he says it all started because of citizens just pushing on a problem. Delancey said the process started when one of Carol Snow's friends noticed that and said it was optional to provide the last four digits of a person's social security number or driver's license on a North Carolina voter registration form. With that, Carol Snow filed a complaint with the North Carolina State Board of Elections back in 2023, which discussed the matter at its November 28th, 2023 meeting.
That meeting was referenced in the lawsuit. She said that the form did not comply with those requirements. Officials at the time said that they were already in the process of revamping the voter registration form, and this is one of the items that they were looking at because there was an inconsistency between the way that the HAVA ID question is presented to voters and the way that the federal statute reads. The board, which consisted of a Democrat chairman by the name of Alan Hirsch and Democrat members. Shabon Millen, Jeff Cameron, and Republican Stacey Eggers IV and Kevin Lewis unanimously agreed that the form violated Section 303 of HAVA and would implement changes already being discussed to the new form.
However, with that, they did reject Carol Snow's request to correct the over 200,000 voters to get their identifying information, all of which were mentioned in that Tuesday lawsuit from the DOJ. Delancey told the Carolina Journal in December of 2023, the state board refused to correct the records of any of them, but they did agree to change the form and still accepted another 37,000 voters that were deficient with that information. They didn't go back to those voters who where normally the law says if you submit a registration form that is incomplete, the board is supposed to send it back to you and have you complete the form. They didn't do that. They just went ahead and accepted them anyway.
So even though the state board admitted to the public that their form was incorrect and they changed the form, they still continued to process applications as if those questions were in fact optional. He told the Carolina Journal that at its peak after the November general election, there were 502,914 registered voters without a driver's license or social security number associated with their voting record. About 250,000 of those were before the HAVA requirements took place, so those registrations are not an issue. Those folks had been registered in the state prior to 2002. In 2024, Carol Snow once again filed a new complaint charging that the verification process of resident driver's license and social security numbers didn't go far enough.
She said at their June 2024 meeting, quote, so it occurs to me that one way for state election officials to avoid or serve Circumvent have a requirement verification steps is by not requiring this ID on their application. It shouldn't be too much to ask for election officials, election board members, and the general counsel of the State Board of Elections to know the HAVE Act like they know their own names and adhere to it. The North Carolina State Board of Election, at the time, still with the Democrat majority, ruled 4-1 against her complaint. The Republican National Committee and the North Carolina Republican Party followed up not long after that with a lawsuit against the state board in the middle parts of last year. The lawsuit said that the election board failed to require information to provide citizenship by not requiring have a required identifying information.
However, that came out too close to the lawsuit was too close to the November election. Thus, the board did not take any action. There have been other concerns about election integrity in the state as well. According to Delancey, in 2008, about 150,000 individuals were identified in North Carolina with fictional voter registrations created by the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now, which was shut down in 2010 over alleged voter fraud. He told the Carolina Journal, what we have worried about since then, we as my group, the Voter Integrity Project, is that we have worried about this for a long time, wondering if there are people voting that they didn't catch.
There were people who were registered innocently that didn't provide the information, and there were others who were either not citizens who truly didn't have a driver's license or social security number, or they were fictional voters brought in during that era, which I call the Acorn Era for fictional voter registration. Delancey mentioned innocent voters in an amicus brief that he filed in a recent Jefferson Griffin Allison Riggs case. Obviously, we covered a lot of details on that. In which Jefferson Griffin wanted some 65,000 ballots cast in the general election to be thrown out. His brief would have disqualified voters that never should have been counted in the 2024 state Supreme Court election without threatening most of the 65,000 ballots that were targeted by Griffin.
He told the Carolina Journal: They said, Which side are you for? And we said neither. We just want the state board of elections to do what they should have done years ago. You can require them. The court had the wherewithal and could have done this.
And in my view, they could have ordered the state board to conduct the list maintenance mailing on some of those 60,000 people who voted in that election and required that information. And it would have been a messy process because some of them would have been gone. But we're just happy to see it, and this is a great situation for both political parties. The General Assembly has also worked on and passed election integrity laws in the past few years, including in 2023, the Senate Bill 747, some election change laws there, as well as Senate Bill 749, the no-partisan advantage in elections. Obviously, a lot of details as it relates to this case.
We are still waiting for additional details from the State Board of Election and the United States Department of Justice.
However, you can read a full overview of HAVA and the full timeline here in North Carolina over on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com. Hello, it is Ryan, and we could all use an extra bright spot in our day, couldn't we? Just to make up for things like sitting in traffic, doing the dishes, counting your steps, you know, all the mundane stuff. That is why I'm such a big fan of Chumba Casino. Chumba Casino has all your favorite social casino-style games that you can play for free anytime, anywhere with daily bonuses.
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Our news talk 1110-993-WBT. Over the last year or so, the Carolina Journal has continued to be reporting on the use of reserve funds in the state budget. That's billions of dollars worth of taxpayer monies that are appropriated yet not accounted for in the general funds headline numbers. This has allowed sizable expansion in the state budget while keeping the headline budget numbers at a more acceptable level.
So, the question that we are digging into this morning is: so, where is that money going and how do those reserve funds work? We're looking this morning at the Information Technology Reserve. According to the latest monthly financial statement from the Office of the State Controller, the IT Reserve, which was established in the 2021 budget, currently has more than $343 million in it. The budget reads as follows. The state controller shall transfer funds available in the Information Technology Reserve to state agencies and departments for information technology projects.
And the funds transferred are appropriated for the fiscal year in which they are transferred. A total of $208.3 million in appropriations has been outlined in the House version of the budget, $264 in the Senate version. All of those appropriations are for the 25 through 27 biennium budget. In comments to Carolina Journal, Joseph Harris, a fiscal policy analyst for the John Locke Foundation, said in addition to the $264 million in the Senate, they recommended transferring $15 million to the Economic Development Project Reserve, $61 million to the Hurricane Helene Fund, and resulting in a total of $341 million worth of reserve funding. The House appropriates $15 million in fiscal year 26 and $12 million in $27 million from the IT Reserve to other reserves in the state for the Uniform Education Reporting System.
The House and Senate have both made appropriations to the school business modernization system. The House appropriating $15 million, the Senate $45 million, so a pretty big difference there between the two different chambers of government here in North Carolina. And the House and Senate are both appropriating to the Electronic Health Records Fund as well, $18.6 million from the House and the Senate on that. These are just a few of the noteworthy expenditures outlined in the committee reports from both the North Carolina House and Senate. Going back to some comments from Joseph Harris, he says, quote, both chambers have proposed substantial allocations from the state's information technology reserve to fund technology upgrades.
indicating that policymakers recognize the need to modernize the state's technological infrastructure. The House recommends $280 million in technological upgrades over the biennium, while the House recommends $264 million. In addition, the Senate also proposes transferring some of that money from the Information Reserve to the technology or from the technology reserve rather to the Economic Development Reserve and the Halev Fund, respectively. The House's proposal would leave $63 million in the technology reserve, while the Senate's recommended budget would drive that balance down to just $2.7 million.
So you're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars being spent in the Senate version on a variety of technological increases and upgrades in the state of North Carolina. We've got a lot more details this morning on this story over on our website, CarolinaJournal.com. The headline, Reserve Fund Spotlight, Information Technology Reserve. You can read all of those details there. Where it's now 542, News Talk 1110, 993, WBT.
We continue to track revenue forecasts across the state of North Carolina. Donna King, the editor-in-chief of CarolinaJournal.com, joins us this morning to talk about a brand new report that could cause some alarm across the North Carolina General Assembly this morning. Donna, good morning. Thanks for the time. What's this new revenue forecast looking like?
Sure, yeah, this is one that happens several times a year. The last one being in February, it comes from the state government's Office of State Budget and Management.
So they are actually forecasting downward since they did in February, down about $180 million in forecasted revenue for the state.
Now, of course, revenue from the state comes in the form of taxes, and so they have to watch carefully economic trends, things that are, how much tax revenue is being collected. They're saying that they're expecting a little bit less growth than they expected, still up, but down about half a percent over what they thought would be happening in February. You know, Don, it's interesting. We were, of course, watching this budget debate that continues in Raleigh between the North Carolina House and Senate. And one of the big disagreements between the two legislative chambers is over some tax cuts with various triggers.
I can imagine that this probably lends itself to more of the House version of the budget, which seemed critical of some of those additional tax cuts due to potential revenue shortfalls. Sure. I mean, certainly it indicates that we do not need to be spending more as a state here in North Carolina, but it also is one of those things that over the last few years, we've seen these be fairly inaccurate, underestimate how much the economy is going to grow and how much revenue we're really going to have, sometimes to the tune of billions.
So it's one of those things you have to take with a little bit of a grain of salt. There is some good data to show that sometimes these really are, and often these are inaccurate and the economy outperforms these budget forecasts.
So it's good to know it should be a tool in the toolbox for these budget writers, but it certainly indicates that we do not need to be spending more as a state.
Well, and you bring up that point, it was echoed by this leader of the North Carolina Senate back a couple of months ago when they first unveiled the budget. Many reporters asked him that same question. He said something to the extent, Donna, these revenue forecasts have been wrong for a decade since Republicans have been cutting tax in the General Assembly. From what I understand, it has to do a little bit with the model that they use to really project some of these forecasts. It tends to be a little bit more static than dynamic, which I guess can lead to some of those discrepancies.
Right, right. I mean, in government, who would have thought, right? I mean, I do think that that is part of the problem. The modeling needs to be updated. And I think that it's, you know, sometimes you see these trends happening.
For example, right now, tariffs. We're hearing a lot about tariffs. And so this is one of the reasons why that forecast is downward because they say that the taxes on automotives, the taxes on the raw materials that go to build cars, tires, engines, whatever, is going to impact, for example, the highway fund. And so they're saying they're expecting that consumers will spend less if these tariffs happen, and therefore the projections will be down.
So they're really having to look at a crystal ball. And that's something to keep in mind as they're going. And of course, a lot of folks, a lot of industries, are very concerned about what tariffs are going to do to North Carolina's economy. And that's something that they have to consider as well. I can imagine you talk about how the state brings in the vast majority of their revenue through taxes.
I can imagine continued inflation, four years of that, middle class Americans, especially middle class North Carolinians having less discretionary money left over at the end of the month, Donna, probably factors pretty heavily into this as well. Absolutely, because what we'll probably see is if we see massive spikes in tariffs, you'll see a lot of hoarding in the very beginning. People will be collecting things that they think are going to go up in price, and then they're going to stop. They're going to stop spending, which is stopping that revenue. The danger that we see, or the potential risk as budget writers go into those conference committees to talk about what we're going to spend in North Carolina, is that there could be a temptation to use this revenue forecast to say, okay, we don't need to continue down the path of reducing taxes for North Carolinians because this might indicate that we'll get a ton more less money and we won't be able to spend and we won't be able to prioritize things.
That's risky because what we're seeing that is one, often these revenue forecasts are wrong and then you end up with a dramatic surplus that you have to figure out what to do with. And that strategy of steadily reducing taxes using economic triggers in North Carolina's growth is a proven strategy. They've been doing it for the last decade.
So just slow that process now based on things like the this revenue projection could really be risky.
Well, one of the arguments that Republicans have made over the last decade while they've continued to cut taxes, specifically the personal income tax and the corporate tax, Donna, is you bring more business to the state, you bring more workers to the state of North Carolina. While those tax rates might be less, with population growth continuing, the state ends up not only making up the lost money, but way more because there's so many more people and so many more businesses in the state. Exactly. And that's exactly what's been happening over the last decade. It's been a proven strategy.
It's a lever that lawmakers, policymakers can use to really grow the state of North Carolina and draw more folks here, much greater than incentives. A reduced corporate tax draws a lot more industry, a lot more jobs, a lot more construction than incentives really do.
So, you know, as they're going through this process, that's something that they're going to have to be tempted to stay away from because derailing or slow rolling that process could really have a dramatic chilling effect on North Carolina's economy. Obviously, we'll be keeping an eye as the budget negotiations continue. Donna, we've got some charts and some more figures this morning as it relates to this revenue forecast. Where can folks go and read those additional details? Absolutely.
Head on over to CarolinaJournal.com. We've got them there, and we've got them linked so you can read the original report yourself. A great update this morning. Donna King, the editor-in-chief of CarolinaJournal.com, joins us on the Carolina Journal News Hour. Hello, it is Ryan, and I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on chumbacasino.com.
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It's 5:53. Welcome back to the Carolina Journal News Hour. News Talk 11:10-993 WBT. Good Friday morning to you. Federal intervention in recent crimes involving illegal immigrants in North Carolina has drawn renewed attention to the intersection of illegal immigration efforts and public safety.
These cases are now being viewed through the lens of Operation Take Back America. That's a Trump administration initiative that prioritizes federal prosecution of non-citizens accused of committing serious crimes on U.S.
soil. Launched by the Department of Justice, Operation Take Back America calls for enhanced coordination between U.S. attorneys, the Department of Homeland Security, and local law enforcement to target illegal immigrants whose presence in the country pose a criminal threat. According to the DOJ, the initiative is intended to, quote, take back our communities from violent criminals and lawbreakers who have no legal right to be here, end quote. A recent high-profile case in North Carolina has revived the policy's relevance, including a high-profile kidnapping in Garner.
Going back to April the 28th, three masked individuals, Mexican nationals, allegedly broke into a home in Garner, restricted a man with duct tape, and abducted his wife and 11-month-old daughter. The three suspects were later confirmed to be in the country illegally and are currently being held on ICE detainers. Initially charged in Wake County, the case has been since been transferred to federal court. The three are being charged in federal crime complaints with kidnapping as well as aiding and abetting. Defense attorney James Payne, who is representing one of the accused, argues that the federal government's involvement constitutes an overreach.
Payne told the Carolina Journal, quote, had this been any other defendant, more likely than not, the state government would prosecute this case. Under federal law, crimes like kidnapping fall under federal jurisdiction when there is a probable cause to believe that the offense involved interstate commerce or cross-state lines. Prosecutors allege that interstate communication via cell phone during this crime meets the probable cause for that interstate commerce clause. According to the attorney James Payne, he says, quote, this means that by which the United States Department of Justice adopted its long standing use of interstate commerce law. He contrasted this case with others that more clearly fall under federal jurisdiction, in his opinion, noting, quote, I have seen defendant cases like this before involving drugs, racketeering, and homicides, but those clearly had interstate connections.
Here, there is not a clear link to interstate commerce. Payne also expressed concerns that the defendants' immigration status is influencing federal interest in the case. While Payne would not confirm or deny whether the assailants were illegal immigrants, he did confirm that all three were held on ICE detainers due to their immigration status, meaning that they are subject to deportation once the criminal procedures are complete. In other incidents across the state, we have covered a separate incident earlier this year. Six illegal immigrants were indicted by a federal grand jury in Charlotte on charges of ranging from illegal re-entry to possession with a firearm, according to U.S.
Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. Several of the individuals had prior felony convictions or deportation orders, but had once again re-entered the United States illegally. Immigration continues to be a major national and statewide discussion. The General Assembly making some changes to law in the last couple of years dealing with those ICE detainers. We've got a full rundown of all of those cases, plus a little bit of that backstory on our website this morning, CarolinaJournal.com.
You can read those additional details.
Well, hey, that's going to do it for a Friday edition of the Carolina Journal News Hour. WBT News is next. Followed by Good Morning, BT. We are back with you Monday morning, 5 to 6, right here on News Talk 1110 and 99.3 WBT. Yeah.
