Staff reports

After raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested more than 200 people across North Carolina earlier this month, seven North Carolina mayors signed a letter condemning the roundup.

Now, Salisbury Mayor Al Heggins is joining that chorus, saying in a statement posted online “I, too, stand with these mayors.”

Heggins said she was not aware of any ICE activities that have taken place in Rowan County or Salisbury and that the Salisbury Police Department does not participate in ICE raids.

“If ICE is planning a raid in the Salisbury community, we have not been told,” Heggins said. “My message to our immigrant residents is this: you live in a city that respects and values your contributions to our community.”

She’s joined by mayors from Durham, Asheville, Greensboro, Fayetteville, Burlington, Chapel Hill and Carrboro, who issued a letter stating their opposition to ICE raids that have swept through N.C. The mayors called on ICE to stop the raids because “they are detrimental to the welcoming, stable, loving communities that we work everyday to build,” Heggins said in the statement.

The more than 200 arrests last week resulted from what ICE Regional Director Sean Gallagher called “the dangerous policies of not cooperating” with the agency, the Associated Press reported.

“This is politics over public safety at its worst,” Gallagher said at a news conference. It’s a change, he said, that gave the agency “no choice” but to conduct targeted enforcement operations, the Associated Press reported.