Oscar Solarzano, 33 an illegal alien from Honduras, is accused of stabbing Kenyon Dobie, 24, during an argument on a Charlotte commuter train.
Dobie told local news media he confronted Solarzano, who was already banned from the city’s transit service, after he yelled at an elderly commuter.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, Solarzano has been deported twice and has a previous conviction for robbery.
Mecklenburg County District Judge Keith Smith denied bond for Solarzano at a hearing this week.
Mecklenburg County is home to approximately 1.2 million people, with about 950,000 residents living in Charlotte, the state's largest city.
Solarzano's arrest for the stabbing comes after ICE agents descended on Charlotte in mid-November to locate and arrest illegal aliens for deportation.
ICE said “Operation Charlotte’s Web" concluded with 250 arrests in a county where local law enforcement has refused to honor about 200 ICE detainers going back to 2019.
North Carolina’s liberal governor, Democrat Josh Stein, complained last month that “heavily-armed” ICE agents were “targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling, and picking up random people in parking lots.”
Charlotte’s liberal mayor, Democrat Vi Lyles, urged the ICE agents to “respect” the values of the “diverse, vibrant city.”
Voters in Democrat-led Charlotte and Mecklenburg County chose Kamala Harris over Donald Trump 65% to 32% in the 2024 presidential election.
Ira Mehlman, of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, says the commuter train stabbing is a consequence of President Biden’s open-border policy.
“Then, at the same time,” he complained, “you have local governments that refuse to cooperate in any way with enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.”
'Stigmatizing' an alleged murderer
The stabbing on a Charlotte commuter train is the second in recent months after Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee, was fatally stabbed by a criminal with a lengthy rap sheet.
Her death, which was caught on security camera footage (pictured at right), set off a firestorm because her alleged killer, Decarlos Brown Jr., was loose on the streets despite a long criminal history.
AFN previously reported the Charlotte City Council adopted a liberal approach to policy and crime in 2020, including a "reimagining police" initiative to reduce the jail population.
Mayor Lyles said critics were "stigmatizing" people with mental health, referring to Brown, who did not have to post bail for a charge of misusing the 911 emergency call system.
Much of the news media ignored Zarustka’s stabbing death or others, like CNN, claimed Republicans were only drawing attention to it because Brown is black.
