U.S. Customs and Border Protection wrongfully detained U.S. citizen Fernando Vazquez during a Cary, North Carolina immigration sweep

On the morning of Tuesday, November 18, 2025, U.S. Border Patrol agents in unmarked vehicles detained Fernando Vazquez, an 18-year-old U.S. citizen born in Raleigh, North Carolina and a commercial landscaper, near a construction jobsite in Cary as part of a broader immigration sweep that had moved from Charlotte into the Raleigh/Triangle area that week, part of the Trump administration's "Operation Charlotte's Web." Agents in a gray Chevrolet Tahoe and black Ford Expedition approached Vazquez as he returned from a nearby store, pinned him against a gate, asked where he was from, and handcuffed and confiscated his wallet despite his North Carolina Real ID, placing him in a vehicle and driving him roughly two miles before determining he was a U.S. citizen.

Vazquez said agents then released him, tossing his belongings — including his college and high school IDs and his AirPods — onto the ground rather than returning them, and left him to make his own way back without transportation. He said he believed he was targeted based on his appearance. The stop was part of a broader wave of Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the Charlotte-to-Raleigh corridor in mid-November 2025, during which several other individuals in the area were also stopped and detained; ICE stated it was not involved in Vazquez's stop specifically.

Updates

2026-07-29 — Vazquez filed a federal damages claim over the detention [4][5]

On July 29, 2026, Vazquez — represented by the ACLU of North Carolina as part of a national effort covering multiple similar claims — announced he had filed an administrative damages claim against the federal government, alleging he was racially profiled and mistreated. "The entire experience left me feeling powerless, frightened, humiliated, and deeply shaken," he said in a statement. The claim states he sustained wrist injuries from the handcuffs and lasting emotional trauma; it also describes agents driving him to an "isolated wooded area" and dumping him there after realizing he was a citizen — a characterization not present in the contemporaneous November 2025 reporting above, which described him being released near a business roughly half a mile from the stop. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment. Vazquez is not among the five named plaintiffs in a related ACLU-backed class-action lawsuit over warrantless immigration arrests in North Carolina filed the same week.