How one Durham daycare responded when it saw the Border Patrol parked outside
Fear and swift action gripped a Durham daycare Tuesday as staff ordered a lockdown after U.S. Border Patrol agents parked outside the building.
All My Children Childcare on Angier Avenue primarily serves children of color, including several from immigrant families.
Owner Elisha Muhammad said an employee immediately called the tip hotline for Siembra NC, an immigrant rights group, to report the sighting.
“We alerted our parents that at this time, we do not want anyone to come and pick up anybody because as always, our safety is our kids,” Muhammad said at a news conference Tuesday evening. “It’s really sad that our kids can’t go to school freely and learn freely, and love on each other [and] their friends, freely.”
Muhammad confirmed that none of the Border Patrol agents tried to enter the daycare or the church it is connected to. Why they were there remains unknown.
The incident was part of a string of Border Patrol sightings across Durham and the Triangle on Tuesday. Siembra NC confirmed the Border Patrol surge led to at least a dozen people being detained in Durham, Raleigh and Cary but said the number could be higher.
Durham and community leaders denounced the operation at the news conference in front of the daycare Tuesday evening.
Nikki Marín Baena, co-director of Siembra NC, said the Trump administration has “had a goal of creating intimidation and fear for immigrant communities.”
“What we have seen in the last several days in the detentions in Charlotte and here are people being detained not committing crimes but outside of the grocery store or pumping gas or hanging up Christmas lights,” she said. “It’s difficult to watch.”
Siembra has trained volunteers to staff its hotline and verify reported sightings with videos or photos. Organizer Andrew Willis Garcés said they have been looking for masked agents driving unmarked cars with out-of-state license plates to verify sightings. Many agents have been seen wearing tactical, camouflage gear.
Details about the people arrested by the Border Patrol in the Triangle, including where they were taken to, were unknown Tuesday night.
“We’ve had at least half a dozen calls to our hotline in the last two hours from the loved ones of the people who were detained today,” Garcés said. “We think there are at least 20 different individual sightings of Border Patrol activity in the Triangle today. We’re sure there were others, we’re sure there’s an undercount, but we aren’t yet sure about how many detentions across those there were.”
Commissioner records arrests
In Durham, three people were arrested behind Beauty World in a shopping center on Avondale Avenue, and another was confirmed arrested at the intersection of North Alston and Liberty streets just east of downtown.
Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, who recorded video of the arrests at Beauty World, said she arrived there after hearing of reports from organizers in the area and arrived to see agents who were “heavily armed, masks covering their faces, kidnapping three men here in Durham.”
Allam said at the news conference that the agents did not show a warrant for the arrests, “acting like they were in a war zone, not in a neighborhood where families were shopping and working.”
“I, myself, am a naturalized immigrant, and I’ve built a life here, I’ve raised my kids here, I serve this community,” she said. “I felt fear, and if I felt it, I know our undocumented neighbors felt it 10 times worse.”
State Sen. Sophia Chitlik, who serves Durham’s District 22, said as a Jewish lawmaker, “we have seen this authoritarianism playbook before.”
“My people know this all too well,” she said. “It always starts with attacking immigrants and it never ends there. As an elected official it is my responsibility to do everything I can to speak out and to stop families from being torn apart.”
Mike Lee, a Durham County commissioner who also drives a Durham Public Schools bus to help with driver shortages, said he noticed several absences Tuesday. The school system, in which roughly 1 in 3 students is Latino, has not yet reported how many students were absent.
“My route starts with an elementary school. The second part of my route serves two middle schools. I usually have 54 students for the elementary school, but today there were only about 20,” Lee said in a Facebook post. “It was heartbreaking to know that due to the threats of border control in the Triangle Area, these kids have to be afraid to go to school.”
Bettina Umstead, the chair of the Durham Public Schools Board of Education, said families should “do what they feel necessary” when deciding whether to send their children to school. School officials have been trained to respond to attempted arrests or questioning from federal agents.
Community organizes in response
Siembra NC has been training and deploying hundreds of volunteers across Charlotte and Raleigh in response to the Border Patrol activity. Monday night, over 600 volunteers in the Triangle signed up to watch and document sightings and camp outside of homes and businesses.
Durham City Council member Javiera Caballero said, “we know how to keep ourselves safe.”
“I think people thought they were going to show up, and they were going to pick on us,” she said. “Durham will not be cowed, we will always stand up and defend our neighbors.”
Mayor Leo Williams, who is out of town in Washington, D.C., said he learned about the arrests through Siembra NC and residents who have been “recording and reporting.”
In a phone interview, he said he took pride that the city is working strategically to inform neighbors about Border Patrol sightings.
“Durham has really stood up as a community today,” Williams said.
In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said over 200 people were arrested in Charlotte from Saturday to Monday.
“Criminal records of those arrested include known gang membership, aggravated assault, possession of a dangerous weapon, felony larceny, simple assault, hit and run, possession of stolen goods, shoplifting, DUI, DWI, and illegal re-entry after prior deportation, a felony,” the department said.
The department had not confirmed the number of arrests in the Triangle as of Tuesday night.
Nathan Collins contributed to this report.
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This story was originally published November 18, 2025 at 4:02 PM with the headline "How one Durham daycare responded when it saw the Border Patrol parked outside."