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    ‘I lose my liberty in that moment’: Charlotte shuts down as citizens and noncitizens alike face ICE arrests

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    On Central Avenue in Charlotte, North Carolina, Manolo’s Bakery has become a focal point for resistance to the expanded immigration raids since border patrol officers descended on the city over the weekend. The owner closed the bakery to prevent his staff from being targeted. Most of the other shops on Charlotte’s busy immigrant-centric street followed suit.Dozens of people have taken up camp in the parking lot to wave signs of support for immigrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been active in the city for months as part of Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda, but things went up a level when the border patrol arrived. Agents swiftly began buzzing through the place to make an armed show of their presence, followed at times by Charlotteans honking their horns in warning.Gerardo Ortiz is Puerto Rican, which is to say, a born American with a Spanish accent, which was good enough for ICE and the border patrol, it seemed. Protesting with the group, Ortiz said, he was picked up twice by federal agents prowling Charlotte’s streets this week while they looked to capture undocumented immigrants.View image in fullscreen“They got me two times, once Saturday and once Sunday,” he said. “They come out from two vans and they tied my hands behind my back and they was telling me, ‘Give me your ID’ – but I got my hands behind my back.”They carted him 20 blocks away and held him in a parking lot for a while before releasing him. He had never been arrested before, he said.“I felt like I lose my liberty in that moment,” Ortiz said. “I was so nervous when I got home. I was crying like a baby, and it’s so terrible.” Some of his friends have been lost to the enforcement raids, he said.Ortiz waved two huge Puerto Rican flags at cars driving by on Wednesday. One had a frog making off with the star, chiming with the tongue-in-cheek costume themes that have emerged at recent anti-ICE protests.He said he was about ready to walk around with them like a cape in case agents decided to arrest him a third time. The Department of Homeland Security announced “Operation Charlotte’s Web” on Saturday, “surging” officers there and sending parts of the city reeling. The DHS said it had made more than 250 arrests across the state.The agency expanded its efforts to the Raleigh-Durham area on Tuesday, though it continued activities in the Charlotte area. A DHS press release cited the unwillingness of local sheriffs to honor ICE detainers for immigrants in local jails.“Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens hurting them, their families or their neighbors,” said DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed. There have been too many victims of criminal illegal aliens. President Trump and [DHS] Secretary [Kristi] Noem will step up to protect Americans when sanctuary politicians won’t.”Local leaders from Charlotte have condemned the enforcement action. Mecklenburg county commissioners passed a resolution of support of the immigrant community on Tuesday night, calling for Customs and Border Protection and ICE to notify the county about any arrests. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg police department released a statement noting that its officers were not authorized to assist with ICE administrative warrants, and does not participate in ICE or CBP operations or help plan or execute federal immigration enforcement activities.Critics in Charlotte describe CBP and ICE’s tactics in the city as indiscriminate at best and deliberately designed to instill fear in the community at worst.On Monday morning, CBP agents attempted to raid OurBridge, an after-school program with children from as far away as Tanzania in Charlotte. “ICE/CBP’s presence at ourBRIDGE had only one goal: instill fear, sending a message to us, our families, and to Charlotte’s immigrant community,” the program’s director posted in an Instagram message. “What happened today was unnecessary, unacceptable and another direct attack on the safety of our community. These actions by ICE, DHS & CBP do not keep ANYONE in Charlotte safe.”The program has halted its services until further notice. Staff said they were no longer going to be available to the media.“Ask me where all my foster kids go to school,” said Beth Clements, who fosters unaccompanied minors who came into the country across the US-Mexico border, in Charlotte. “It’s secret, because of stuff like this.” She described her care as an act of defiance against anti-immigrant heavy-handedness. This wasn’t about enforcement, she said, adding: “It’s about cruelty, from the administration down. This is about hatred, racism and cruelty … I don’t know how we clean this up. I don’t know how anybody looks anybody in the eye and says it’s OK that your family was stolen.”The Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district has more than 141,000 students, the second-largest district in North Carolina. About a quarter are white; more than 30% are Latino. On a normal day, 9,000 to 10,000 students miss school, according to the authorities. On Monday, more than 30,000 were absent, mostly without an excuse.Half of Sandra Speight’s special-needs class missed school, said the Charlotte teacher. “Three of those students out of my six are Hispanic and have told me that they are fearful to come out,” she said.“One mom drives her blind and autistic daughter to and from school, and she will not bring her back to school until she feels safe. I’m hoping that this will die down by the end of the week,” she added.She anticipates people will stay home until after Thanksgiving, saying: “I believe they’re trying to strike fear and intimidate people so that they will be afraid. That’s the only explanation that I have. I can’t explain why else would you do it.”Homeland security’s Atlanta office, which handles North Carolina, referred inquiries to a CBP spokesperson, who asked for questions to be submitted by email for comment.The stretch of closed stores on Central Avenue is a visible sign of deep disruption across the state, as immigrants refuse to leave their homes. The enforcement activity landed in the middle of Charlotte’s global entrepreneurship week, a program for international trade development and social networking.Organizers canceled an event at the Camino church that had been scheduled for Thursday, said Steven Lewis, executive director of the Boost Pad, a non-profit working on Charlotte’s economic mobility problems. Immigration agents had raided another Latino church over the weekend, making an arrest in front of the congregation while people scattered into the woods.“Given what’s going on in Charlotte as it relates to the federal ICE agents being in town, they thought it was in the best interest of everyone to cancel the event,” Lewis said. “I’m interested in the safety of our community and the safety of our citizens, but I want to do it in a way that’s lawful. Charlotte is currently just another city that has had a federal fingerprint on it that isn’t good.”Chef Ammalu Saleh runs Serengeti Kitchen, a Tanzanian restaurant in a popular incubator space for food startups near the University of North Carolina campus in downtown Charlotte. She tried to get halal lamb from Costco a few days ago – her bestseller – to no avail.View image in fullscreen“I went online on Sunday for it to be delivered, but there are not drivers to deliver it,” she said. “I feel most of the drivers are in the targeted population, so that is the issue. It is really impacting not only the targeted population, but even other individuals.”Saleh is an American citizen. “But I am afraid,” she said. “What if they stop me? I’m not walking around with my passport. Or they feel like I’m a threat for some reason. I have a family. I have a business to run, and just for myself as well, it is a concern.”Ezra Rash, a staff attorney at the Charlotte Center for Legal Advocacy, has asked his clients to stay home when they can.“Every single client I’ve spoken to has said they’re staying home,” he said. “They’re not going out. They’re not going to work.” Rash has moved court appearances to the WebEx online platform. “We don’t want them even traveling to the office. It’s really dangerous to be on the road right now.”His clients are often in the legal limbo of immigration law, following the rules for obtaining a visa and permanent status, but without permission to remain permanently in the United States. “They’re following processes. So they’re not undocumented in that they don’t have any kind of status in the United States … But that doesn’t protect them from prolonged detention.”A sense of solidarity is driving local reaction, said Manolo Betancur, owner of Manolo’s Bakery. He has operated the bakery for 28 years, and built a charitable non-profit in tandem with his business.View image in fullscreen“I’m not going to risk the integrity of my customers, my friends, my employees and my own integrity,” said the native Colombian and US citizen. “There are no colors here, man. There’s just one community here. This is the most welcoming side of town. Everybody’s friendly, and I don’t know if there’s another place in the world like east Charlotte, man, but I’m just so blessed, man, and I’m so lucky that we are located here. They’re not messing with me – they’re messing with all of our immigrant community.”Thanksgiving is Betancur’s best time of year, he said, but he’s going to stay closed until his community feels safe again. “Whatever it takes,” he said. “Like I keep telling my son, you know, good people are always the majority, and we can never lose faith in humanity. I’m here to help, to support and to be part of the solution. I love this nation my kids were born in, and I will die for this country.” More

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      Why are US border agents in Charlotte, and are they allowed to operate there?

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      What is happening in Charlotte? North Carolina’s largest city is reeling from a series of immigration raids that have arrested more than 100 people, leading to alarm and protests.US Customs and Border Protection has called it Operation Charlotte’s Web, and border agents have been seen near churches, apartment complexes and stores. Greg Bovino, a hardline Border Patrol chief who has led agents in a similar effort in Chicago and Los Angeles, has also been spotted.Over the weekend, Bovino – known for posting highly stylized videos of enforcement actions – touted his work on X. “From border towns to the Queen City, our agents go where the mission calls,” he said, referring to Charlotte.Josh Stein, the governor of North Carolina, has criticized the crackdown as simply “stoking fear”.Why are we seeing more border agents in US cities?Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which encompasses the Border Patrol, is about 60,000 agents strong – making it the largest law enforcement agency in the country.The department has long had the authority to conduct patrols further inland, but it has until recently been highly uncommon to see agents stray far from the south-western border. During Donald Trump’s second term, however, agents have become ubiquitous foot soldiers in the administration’s mass deportation agenda.Under a 1946 statute, Border Patrol agents have the ability to conduct warrantless searches within a “reasonable distance” – or up to 100 miles – from any international boundaries. Those boundaries include international land borders as well as coastlines – so in effect, their range encapsulates most US major cities, including LA, New York and Washington DC. Cities such as Chicago falls within this 100-mile zone, because the Great Lakes are considered a maritime boundary.Nearly two-thirds of the US population lives within the zone.Can Border Patrol operate in places such as Charlotte that are not near the border? The short answer is yes.That’s according to Deborah Anthony, a professor of legal studies at the University of Illinois Springfield with an expertise in constitutional law and the legality of Border Patrol operations. She clarifies that within 100 miles of an international border or US coastline, Border Patrol operates with expanded authority that other law enforcement agencies do not have. Within that perimeter, agents can run immigration checkpoints that require every motorist to stop, even without reasonable suspicion, and can board buses, for example, for immigration inquiries.But once agents are outside the 100-mile perimeter, Border Patrol loses those exemptions and must follow the same constitutional limits as any other law enforcement agency. For instance, agents cannot indiscriminately stop cars or pedestrians or set up checkpoints.They also cannot detain or question people without reasonable suspicion of an immigration violation. To arrest or detain someone, Border Patrol agents would need probable cause, just like any other law enforcement agency. Therefore, if agents in Charlotte conduct stops, detain people without cause, or operate checkpoints inland without reasonable suspicion, that is technically a violation of the constitution.“I think that their presence in Charlotte is something that the community should pay close attention to, because whether they’re operating legally depends on the specifics of how things are playing out,” Anthony said.Who is Greg Bovino, the border chief in charge of these efforts? Until recently, he was an unheralded regional Border Patrol agent from southern California. But since the summer, Bovino, 55, has become the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts in cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and now Charlotte.View image in fullscreenBovino, a 29-year Border Patrol veteran who formally headed the El Centro sector in southern California, has frequently broadcast his operations in social media videos that resembles action films.Bovino is not without controversy: he has come under fire for making misleading statements about immigration raids, and Border Patrol operations in Chicago and Los Angeles have triggered lawsuits over the use of force, including widespread deployment of chemical agents.Last month, a federal judge ordered Bovino to regularly appear in court with updates about operations in the city, an effort to create more oversight over the Trump administration’s militarized immigration crackdown. Bovino was also ordered to get a body camera and complete training on the use of a body camera.In August, the New York Times reported that two undocumented people died trying to flee from Bovino’s agents. A Mexican farm worker fell from a greenhouse and a Guatemalan day laborer was hit by a vehicle following a raid at a Home Depot.What does Border Patrol say about the scope of its operations? In response to questions from the Guardian about Border Patrol’s operations in Charlotte, DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said: “While the US Border Patrol primarily operates within 100 air miles of the border, the legal framework provided by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), title 8, title 19 of the US Code, and other laws allows them to operate anywhere in the United States.”She added: “Their ability to operate nationwide ensures Border Patrol can enforce immigration laws, combat smuggling and address national security threats anywhere in the United States, and that immigration enforcement is not limited to border regions when individuals who evade detection at the border can still be apprehended.”Lawyers and human rights advocates, however, have said that the agents, who are trained to block illegal entries, drug smugglers and human traffickers at the country’s borders, may be ill-suited to conduct civil immigration enforcement in urban communities.“The Border Patrol is certainly quite cavalier, and has been very aggressive historically as it goes about its enforcement responsibilities,” César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a law professor at Ohio State University, previously told the Guardian.Robert Tait and the Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Protests in Charlotte as aggressive immigration arrests continue

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      Aggressive arrests by federal immigration agents continued in Charlotte on Monday after a weekend sweep in which authorities said they detained a total of at least 130 people in North Carolina’s largest city, as protests picked up.North Carolina’s governor, Josh Stein, on Monday warned that the crackdown was simply “stoking fear” and resulting in severe disruption.The Trump administration on Saturday sent border patrol agents to Charlotte to enhance operations by Customs and Immigration Enforcement.The White House has argued that its latest focus on the Democratic-run city of about 950,000 people is an effort to combat crime but the enforcement has been met with fierce objections from local leaders – amid declining crime rates in the city.Many residents were additionally outraged when there was a flurry of reported encounters with immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores over the weekend, chasing and arresting people as part of anti-immigration measures but which included some US citizens.“We’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks,” Stein, a Democrat, said in a video statement late on Sunday.“This is not making us safer. It’s stoking fear and dividing our community.”Similarly, Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles said on Monday that she is “deeply concerned with many of the videos I’ve seen,” adding: “I urge all agencies operating here to conduct their work with respect for those values.“We are actively working with our partners to determine what more we can do to support our community while working within complicated legal boundaries,” Lyles continued.Over the weekend, a coalition of Muslim-American groups led by the Council on American-Islamic Relations issued a public warning to residents, saying: “We urge all our community members to stay safe during these times, especially as mosques and community spaces may be targeted.“Our city is strengthened by families who contribute to its neighborhoods, schools, businesses, and houses of worship. Charlotte, and North Carolina as a whole, has long been shaped by newcomers, and we refuse to allow anyone, local or national, to use xenophobia or Islamophobia to divide us or make our neighbors feel unsafe,” the coalition added.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that border patrol officers had arrested “over 130 illegal aliens who have all broken” immigration laws.The agency said the records of those arrested included gang membership, aggravated assault, shoplifting and other crimes, but it did not say how many of such cases had resulted in convictions, how many people had been facing charges or any other details.Stein acknowledged that it was a stressful time, but he called on residents to stay peaceful. If people see something they feel is wrong, they should record it and report it to local law enforcement, the governor said.The homeland security department, which oversees Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has said it is focusing on North Carolina because of so-called sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local authorities and immigration agents.Meanwhile, North Carolina’s Republican party hailed the operations, with chairperson Jason Simmons saying: “Border Patrol is in Charlotte for one reason: the need is real.”He went on to point the blame at Democrats, saying: “When local Democrats – who control all aspects of local government – refuse to enforce the law, federal agencies have no choice but to step in and protect this community. This is no political stunt.”North Carolina’s Democratic representative Deborah Ross pushed back against claims that the operations are being conducted for the sake of public safety, saying: “The Trump administration is sowing fear in our communities. They are targeting people based on the color of their skin and the languages they speak. This is not public safety.”Echoing Ross was Roy Cooper, the state’s former Democratic governor who said: “Randomly sweeping up people based on what they look like, including American citizens and those with no criminal records, risks leaving violent criminals at large while hurting families and the economy.”Several North Carolina county jails honor “detainers”, or requests from federal officials to hold an arrested immigrant until agents can take custody of them. But Mecklenburg county, which includes Charlotte, does not.Also, the city’s police department does not help with immigration enforcement. The DHS alleged that about 1,400 detainers across North Carolina had not been honored and claimed this was putting the public at risk.US courts have repeatedly upheld the legality of sanctuary laws.On Saturday, some normally bustling commercial districts were described as being at a standstill as shoppers stayed home to avoid possible encounters with ICE or border patrol agents seeking undocumented residents to arrest.Manolo Betancur, owner of Manolo’s Bakery, a Latino-run bakery operating in Charlotte since 1997, closed his business temporarily because he said immigration enforcement officers were targeting customers.Some welcomed the Trump administration’s effort, however, including the Mecklenburg county Republican party chairman, Kyle Kirby, who said in a post on Saturday that the county GOP “stands with the rule of law – and with every Charlottean’s safety first”.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      Federal immigration officers begin sweep in Charlotte, North Carolina

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      Federal immigration officers on Saturday began a sweep through Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina, federal officials confirmed.Local media reports said that among the locations targeted by masked federal agents was a church in east Charlotte, where an arrest was made while about 15 to 20 church members were doing yard work on the property.The pastor at the church, who did not want to identify himself or his church, told the Charlotte Observer that agents reportedly asked no questions and showed no identification before taking the man away. The man’s wife and child were inside the church at the time, said the pastor.“Right now, everybody is scared. Everybody,” he said. “One of these guys with immigration, he said he was going to arrest one of the other guys in the church. He pushed him.”Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant homeland security secretary, said in a statement to the Associated Press that federal agents “are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed”.“Americans should be able to live without fear of violent criminal illegal aliens hurting them, their families, or their neighbors,” McLaughlin added.Local officials including the mayor, Vi Lyles, criticized such actions, saying in a statement that they “are causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty”.“We want people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg county to know we stand with all residents who simply want to go about their lives,” the statement said.In another interaction with federal agents in east Charlotte, two workers were hanging Christmas lights in Rheba Hamilton’s front yard when two Customs and Border Protection agents walked up.One tried to speak to the workers in Spanish, she said. They did not respond, and the agents left without making arrests.“This is real disconcerting, but the main thing is we’ve got two human beings in my yard trying to make a living. They’ve broken no laws, and that’s what concerns me,” said Hamilton, 73, who recorded the encounter on her cellphone.Hamilton said that the agents were “looking for easy pickings. There was nobody here with TV cameras, nobody here protesting, there’s just two guys working in a yard and an old white lady with white hair sitting on her porch drinking her coffee.”Willy Aceituno, a 46-year-old Honduran-born US citizen, said he was on his way to work Saturday when he saw “a lot of Latinos running”, chased by “a lot of border patrol agents”.Aceituno said he was stopped twice by agents. During the second encounter, he said, he was forced from his vehicle by agents who broke the window of his vehicle.“I told them: ‘I’m an American citizen,’” he told the Associated Press. “They wanted to know where I was born, or they didn’t believe I was an American citizen.” Aceituno said he was taken to a border patrol vehicle and later released after showing documents proving his citizenship.Rumors of an impending sweep in the area have been circulating for days after the county sheriff, Garry McFadden, said that two federal officials had told him customs agents would be arriving soon.Paola Garcia of Camino, a bilingual non-profit serving families in Charlotte, said she and her colleagues had observed an increase in stops since Friday.“Basically what we’re seeing is that there have been lots of people being pulled over,” Garcia said.Businesses in the area, including a local Latin American bakery, had closed before the raids, said city council member JD Mazuera Arias.“This is customs and border patrol. We are not a border city, nor are we a border state. So why are they here?” he said. “This is a gross violation of constitutional rights for not only immigrants but for US citizens.”Democratic governor Josh Stein said on Friday that the vast majority of people detained in such operations have no criminal convictions, and some are citizens. Stein urged people to record any “inappropriate behavior” and notify local law enforcement.But Mecklenburg county Republican party chair Kyle Kirby said Democratic officials “have abandoned their duty to uphold law and order” and are “demonizing the brave men and women of federal law enforcement”.“Let us be clear: President Trump was given a mandate in the 2024 election to secure our borders,” Kirby said in a statement. “Individuals who are in this country legally have nothing to fear.”The raids on Charlotte come three months after the Trump administration identified the city as an example of a Democratic-led city that was not doing enough to protect citizens, following the fatal stabbing of Ukrainian immigrant Iryna Zarutska aboard a Charlotte light-rail train.The sweeps follow a pattern of similar immigration enforcement operations across the US, including in Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland and New York City.The east Charlotte church where the raid took place on Saturday said it was suspending services and yard work until congregants felt safe to gather again, 15-year-old Miguel Vazquez told the Charlotte Observer.“We thought church was safe and nothing gonna happen,” Vazquez said. “But it did happen.” More

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      US right capitalizes on fatal stabbing of Ukrainian refugee in North Carolina

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      The random and unprovoked killing of a young woman in North Carolina several weeks ago has become a viral video, a political football, and a powerful rightwing talking point – even as the horror and anger her death has provoked obscures what experts say is a vital story about the failures of the American mental health system.The alleged perpetrator, Decarlos Brown Jr, 34, has a long history of problems with the law and mental health issues. He had been arrested 14 times and served a five-year stint for armed robbery. Brown had also come to believe that there was something alien and malevolent inside him – a “man-made material”, he told people, possibly a computer chip implanted by the government that was fighting him for control of his body.Brown was riding a light rail in Charlotte, North Carolina, last month when he allegedly stood up with a pocket knife, abruptly stabbed a nearby woman, then walked away. The victim, Iryna Zarutska, was a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who worked at a pizza parlor and hoped to become a veterinary assistant. Haunting security-camera footage shows her curled up weakly as she bleeds to death in her restaurant uniform. In a phone call from jail after his arrest, Brown, who reportedly has schizophrenia, told his sister that Zarutska had been trying to read his mind.Initially a tragedy covered by mostly local news outlets, Zarutska’s death has grown in recent days into a cause célèbre on the American right. In more centrist conservative accounts, Zarutska’s killing is a symbol and symptom of a lax criminal justice system that should never have allowed Brown to freely walk the streets. In more inflammatory, far-right discourse, the story of a formerly incarcerated Black man’s killing of a defenseless blond woman has become racist fodder for sinister theories about white persecution and Black criminality.On X, Elon Musk has tweeted or retweeted dozens of posts about the story, many arguing that the media would have covered the story more aggressively if a white person had attacked a Black victim, and contrasting it with the media attention given to cases like that of Daniel Penny, a white man who was arrested in New York in 2023 for killing an unhoused Black man with mental illness on the subway in what he described as self-defense. (He was acquitted in trial.)Viral content online has claimed that Brown targeted Zarutska specifically because she was white, though as of now there is no evidence that he did. Some rightwing accounts have noted with pointed irony that a photo that has circulated of Zarutska appears to show a Black Lives Matter poster in the background. Musk and others have pledged money to a campaign to put up George Floyd-style murals of her across American cities.Outrage has reached the highest levels of the US government. Donald Trump has declared on social media that the “ANIMAL who so violently killed the beautiful young lady from Ukraine, who came to America searching for peace and safety, should be given a ‘Quick’ (there is no doubt!) Trial, and only awarded THE DEATH PENALTY.”View image in fullscreenJD Vance, the vice-president, called Brown a “thug” and noted his lengthy arrest record. “It wasn’t law enforcement that failed,” Vance wrote. “It was weak politicians … who kept letting him out of prison.” Earlier this year Brown was arrested for allegedly making unfounded 911 calls, and released after signing a written promise to reappear in court.Pam Bondi, the US attorney general, has announced federal charges against Brown – despite the strong possibility that Brown is mentally ill and could thereby be deemed not culpable by reason of insanity, and despite the fact that the federal government would not typically become involved in the prosecution of a tragic but random act of local violence.Emmitt Riley, a professor of politics and African American studies at Sewanee, the University of the South, said that Zarutska’s death is an undeniable tragedy but has become politicized in a way with obvious racial overtones.“Donald Trump has a history of calling for the death penalty, in particular for Black and brown people,” he said – most famously in the case of the Central Park Five, a group of teenagers who were imprisoned for the 1989 rape of a woman jogging in New York. Although they were later exonerated, Trump has never apologized.Experts on mental health and criminal justice believe the true story of this case is less sensational than tragic, and indicative of a fraying American mental health system that failed to protect Zarutska in part because it first failed to protect Brown from himself.“When I hear people define this as [solely] a criminal justice problem or lack of being ‘tough on crime,’ I think: ‘Let’s be real. Let’s define the problem as what it is,’” Sheryl Kubiak, the dean of the school of social work at Wayne State University, said. “We have a mental health crisis in this country, and we need to address it with appropriate mental health resources.”Jails, she said, were not created for treating mental illness, nor equipped to do so.Although Brown had a long history of reckless behavior, his mental problems seemed to get worse after he was released from prison in 2020, members of his family have told the news media. He walked around talking to himself and was given to unexpected angry outbursts.Like many people with seeming severe mental illness, Brown was offered treatment but resisted accepting it. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia, his mother told ABC, but refused to take medication. She and other members of the family repeatedly tried to get him help. At one point she asked a hospital to admit him but was told, she said, that the hospital could not “make” a person accept treatment. At another point a mental health facility kept him for in-patient treatment but released him after two weeks.Kubiak and other experts note that cases like Brown’s illustrate two longstanding and overlapping debates about the treatment of mental illness. One concerns “institutionalization”, the treatment of serious mental illness in dedicated institutions segregated from larger society, and the other concerns “involuntary” treatment of those who need treatment but refuse it.In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States built large, then state-of-the-art mental hospitals across the country to house and treat patients. But institutionalization fell out of favor in the 1950s and 1960s, due to changing cultural and legal attitudes, advances in medication, and a fear that institutions were overused and risked abuse. Mental health practices instead emphasized treating people within their communities. Civil libertarians also lobbied for the bar for involuntary treatment to be stricter. Many of the hospitals were shuttered.View image in fullscreenYet the government has not properly funded and organized a system to replace the older one, Jeffrey Swanson, a sociologist and professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University, said. Where someone with severe mental health problems might have previously had access to dedicated, long-term treatment facilities, they are now likely to end up in a revolving door of jails, ERs, and psychiatric wards with too many patients and too few beds.“Now we have probably more people with serious mental illnesses on any given day in one of our massive big city jails, like Cook county jail in Chicago or the Los Angeles county jail or Rikers Island [in New York], than we ever had in these asylums,” he said. “And it’s really a scandal.”Some progressives are opposed to involuntary treatment, casting it as a violation of consent. Mental health experts tend to take a more nuanced view, Swanson said, particularly in the case of patients whose illnesses are severe and defined by “anosognosia,” a term that means that someone doesn’t recognize that they are ill.A well-known argument for involuntary treatment, he added, says: “We wouldn’t let our grandmother with Alzheimer’s disease wander around and sleep in the subway just because she doesn’t know that she needs treatment; that’d be inhumane. So why do we tolerate that for young adults with schizophrenia?”His own opinion, he said, is complicated by the inadequacies of the current mental health system. “If you’re going to coerce someone into treatment for their own good, you have to have the system capacity to provide those services. I mean, otherwise, it’s really ironic to say: ‘We’re going to force you into treatment that doesn’t exist. We’re going to force you, but we don’t have a bed for you.’”Zarutska was buried in Charlotte on 27 August. Family members who were also in the US as refugees attended the funeral, but her father, who cannot leave Ukraine due to wartime restrictions, had to watch by video call.The Ukrainian embassy offered to help repatriate her body for burial, according to an uncle who spoke to People, but her family chose to inter her in the US; she had fallen “so much in love with the American dream”, he said.Her death is something “I would wish on no one,” Riley, the professor of political science, said. Yet until the US has better systems for treating mental health, “this will be a repeated cycle.” More