Homeland Security Investigations officers search for two individuals who fled the scene after being stopped while selling flowers on the side of the road on Nov. 16, 2025, in Charlotte, N.C. Photo: Ryan Murphy/Getty Images

Alain Stephens is an investigative reporter covering gun violence, arms trafficking, and federal law enforcement.

On a chilly evening in mid-November, about 135 people gathered along a highway in Boone, North Carolina, a small Appalachian college town not known as a hotbed of leftist protest. They held signs reading “Nazis were just following orders too” and “Time to melt the ICE,” and chanted profane rebukes at Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rumored to be in the area. “They came here thinking they wouldn’t be bothered,” one Appalachian State Univers

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