Roy Cooper was successfully lobbied by anti-ICE group with dark money ties

Former Gov. Roy Cooper (D-NC), the front-runner in the Democratic primary for North Carolina’s open Senate seat, was successfully lobbied in 2019 by an anti-deportation group with financial ties to a dark-money hub. After a pressure campaign from the group, Cooper rejected legislation that would have helped immigration authorities track illegal immigrants who had been arrested in the state.

That same activist group, a North Carolina-based nonprofit organization named Siembra NC, is now gearing up to rally behind Cooper’s 2026 Senate bid.

Attempting to win a Senate seat that Republicans have held for years in a battleground state, Cooper’s record on immigration could draw scrutiny, particularly as Democrats attempt to navigate intense outrage on the Left over immigration enforcement that roughly half of Americans still generally