Granddaughter of ‘Charlotte’s Web’ author criticizes use of book title in DHS immigration crackdown operation

A Department of Homeland Security Investigations Officer searches for two people who fled the scene after being stopped while selling flowers on the side of the road Sunday in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Ryan Murphy/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

In the popular children’s book “Charlotte’s Web,” the title character, a spider, uses her web as an instrument of good to help secure the freedom of Wilbur, a pig on her farm.

Federal immigration officials used the book’s title to name their latest crackdown, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Operation Charlotte’s Web.

The author’s granddaughter drew a sharp contrast Sunday between the federal raids and the ideals E.B. White highlighted in the beloved book, in a statement Martha White shared with CNN.

Her grandfather “certainly didn’t believe in masked men, in unmarked cars, raiding people’s homes and workplaces without IDs or summons,” said White, who is also her grandfather’s literary executor, in the statement. “He didn’t condone fearmongering.”

And even as top Border Patrol official Gregory Bovino, who is from North Carolina, leaned into the “Charlotte’s Web” messaging Sunday in an X post, Martha White slammed the agency for riding on the book’s coattails with a message antithetical to the story her grandfather told.

“He believed in the rule of law and due process,” Martha White said of her grandfather.

The move into North Carolina comes as agents have arrested thousands across the nation, including dozens in Charlotte, in immigration raids and deported nearly 200,000 people as of late August. The controversy highlights the tension between the Trump administration efforts to arrest and deport immigrants it deems criminals and the work of civic and community groups highlighting residents’ rights.

The operation in Charlotte seeks to “target the criminal illegal aliens who flocked to the Tar Heel State because they knew sanctuary politicians would protect them and allow them to roam free on American streets,” according to DHS.

The crackdowns have led to sharp criticism from politicians and community organizations alike.

“In Charlotte, we’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling and picking up random people in parking lots, and off of our sidewalks,” North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein said in a social media message.

Bovino cited Charlotte’s Web in his X post that gave a nod to agents involved in the operation: “Wherever the wind takes us. High, low. Near, far. East, west. North, south. We take to the breeze, we go as we please.” In the book, that’s when Charlotte’s babies hatch and fly off, leaving Wilbur to cry himself to sleep, only to find out the next morning that three spiders stayed to keep him company.

White highlighted the message of generosity and inclusion that permeates the children’s tale: ‘“By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a little,” Charlotte says in the book. “Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

CNN has reached out to DHS for comment on Martha White’s statement.

‘Operation Charlotte’s Web’ kicks off with 81 arrests

Charlotte is the latest city in the Trump adminstration’s crosshairs to face an immigration crackdown.

Border Patrol agents on Saturday arrested 81 people in the city during a surge of immigration enforcement, Bovino said Sunday.

The arrests took place during a span of about five hours on Saturday, according to Bovino, who has been tasked with helping lead the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in multiple US cities.

Many of those who were arrested over the weekend “had significant criminal and immigration history, are off the streets,” Bovino said on X.

Several businesses closed temporarily after the operation was announced, including a popular Colombian bakery that had shuttered its doors only once in the past 28 years.

“I need to protect my customers. I need to protect my people. I need to protect myself and my family,” said Manuel “Manolo” Betancur, who closed his family bakery Saturday after seeing men in green uniforms chase and tackle people outside the shop. He said he isn’t sure when he will reopen.

Mom criticized use of daughter’s story for ‘Operation Midway Blitz’

It’s not the first time Trump administration has been criticized for basing the name for an immigration operation on someone’s story.

The mother of the woman who became the face of Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago said last month her daughter would not have wanted to be associated with the crackdown.

The Department of Homeland Security said it launched the enforcement push in honor of Katie Abraham, an Illinois woman who authorities say was killed in a drunken-driving hit-and-run crash by a man who was in the US illegally.

Her mother, Denise Lorence, decided to speak out after realizing the operation’s association with her daughter wasn’t going away, she wrote in an op-ed for the Chicago Tribune.

“Losing a child unlocked a pain I never knew existed. Losing a child to a crime adds to the depths of despair,” she wrote. “Having my child’s legacy be associated with a politically charged and controversial operation instead of the positivity and light she contributed to those within her community is simply unbearable.”

Her daughter would not want to be associated with the immigration crackdown in a city she loved and felt safe in, Lorence wrote in the op-ed titled “My daughter is the face of Operation Midway Blitz. I am reclaiming her legacy.”

She said Abraham wasn’t political, she avoided confrontation and “was the person people wanted to be around,” she said.

Lorence acknowledged that Abraham’s father, Joe Abraham, and his wife agreed that Katie’s name could be used for the operation. Joe Abraham previously told CNN the federal government failed to”miserably” in protecting his daughter and that state politicians ignored her death, and by extension, “let it happen.”

“Whether or not you agree with Operation Midway Blitz is not the story I am here to write,” Lorence wrote, but “she did not choose to be thrust into this political spotlight to advance an operation she knew nothing about.”

Martha White also emphasized the distance between her grandfather’s work and those trying to appropriate it.

“It’s important to know when to speak up,” she said in her statement, “to expose the lies or misperceptions (the rule of law still applies in Sanctuary Cities, by the way), and when to deny the limelight that feeds the cruelty.”