On Tuesday night, I spent hours trying to locate my client, a gentleman who had been seized by Customs and Border Protection on Avondale Drive. He had been at work, like all of us, and had to run for safety inside his workplace when two masked men jumped out of a vehicle. When his whole body was within his workplace, now a refuge, federal agents forced the door open and dragged him away. As I write this almost 12 hours after his apprehension, his children —the oldest only sixteen—are still waiting for news of their father’s whereabouts.
This is not a one-off incident. ICE’s tactics of unannounced seizures at workplaces, schools, and neighborhoods have created rolling humanitarian crises across North Carolina. These pop-up raids destabilize families, interrupt local commerce, and spread panic through entire communities. These tactics are not only anathema to the founding principles of this Republic, but a direct example of what the founders built safeguards to prevent. This form of immigration enforcement is not only a constitutional infirmity, it is a cancer to the Republic.
And our state response has been, to put it frankly, among the weakest in the nation. Governor Josh Stein has issued brief, perfunctory statements, but has not yet exercised the powerful tools that North Carolina law already places in his hands. Overnight, he has the authority to transform our response from the weakest in America to the strongest. But he must act.
While immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility, the humanitarian fallout is squarely a state responsibility. When children lose their caretakers, when local economies are shaken, when fear shuts down neighborhoods, when the safety of people and property is violated, that is an emergency for which the State of North Carolina has the obligation to respond.
Fortunately, the tools to respond already exist. We just haven’t used them.
North Carolina law, specifically N.C.G.S Chapter 127A, authorizes the governor to activate a force known as the State Defense Militia. This is a civilian, humanitarian, and public-order force separate from the National Guard. It is not subject to federal activation and belongs entirely to the people of North Carolina, with the governor as commander-in-chief.
North Carolina’s State Defense Militia was most recently activated by Gov. James Martin between 1988 and 1996, when it supported state responses to major emergencies including Hurricane Hugo in 1989, assisted with disaster coordination and communications, and provided civil-defense capacity during the Gulf War period. For decades, its role has been to provide relief, order, and support when communities faced destabilizing events.
Let it be absolutely clear:
This is not a call to conflict.
This is not a call to obstruct lawful federal action.
This is not a call for anyone to take up arms.
In fact, the militia does not need to be armed at all. Its power lies not in weapons but in organization: the coordinated bodies of North Carolina’s citizens, acting lawfully under a central command, performing duties that the law explicitly authorizes. This is not an insurrection, but the complete opposite: it is the exercise of the federalist constitutional structures that the framers put in place so that states may defend their people, their rights, and maintain civil order without violating federal supremacy.
The statute is explicit: the militia can be mobilized to “secure the safety of persons and property, suppress riots or insurrections, repel invasions or provide disaster relief.” The consequences of ICE raids, as they occur today, fit those legal purposes. They rip parents away from children without warning. They shut down businesses without notice. They traumatize bystanders. They generate chaos that local authorities are often unable to respond to. They violate the sovereignty of the state of North Carolina and the constitutional rights of her people.
Reactivating the State Defense Militia would allow vetted civilians under state command to:
- Maintain the due process rights of all North Carolina residents
- Set up family-locator systems for children whose parents are seized
- Provide immediate humanitarian support to distressed families
- Offer translation and communication services in emergencies
- Coordinate safe zones and community-stabilizing spaces
- Protect private property from being damaged during federal actions
- Assist small businesses destabilized by raids
- Deter unlawful harassment or opportunistic crime
- Maintain public calm and order during destabilizing events
None of this interferes with lawful federal action. All of it protects North Carolina.
There are thousands, if not millions, of North Carolinians ready to serve in such a force: veterans, teachers, students, clergy, tradespeople, lawyers, neighbors. Ordinary people with extraordinary dedication to this state and this Republic. People who believe that when a community is thrown into crisis and the sovereign rights of our state are trampled, the state has a moral and legal obligation to respond.
North Carolina is not powerless.
Our laws are not idle decorations.
Our republic is too precious to lose to tyranny.
It is time to reactivate the State Defense Militia. Not as a force of confrontation, but as a force of protection. Protection of our people, our property, and the constitutional framework of our state and Republic.
Governor Stein: the moment to act is now, or never.
Italo Medelius is a Durham attorney and labor union officer, serving as General Counsel for the North Carolina Tenants Union and Secretary of Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment (CAUSE). He is the former chair of the Durham Mayor’s Hispanic-Latino Committee and a current member of the Durham Workers’ Rights Commission.
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