Number of illegal immigrants arrested on Nantucket grows: ‘Horrible and shameful’

The number of illegal immigrants ICE Boston agents arrested during a multi-day operation on Nantucket earlier this month has grown to five, with details of an apprehended MS-13 gang member latest emerging.

Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston arrested 30-year-old Salvadoran Angel Deras-Mejia on September 12 and charged the documented gang member with disorderly conduct and two counts of assault and battery on a household member.

The arrest came a day after a 41-year-old Guatemalan noncitizen was charged with a sex crime against a Nantucket resident and two days after ICE apprehended three other illegal immigrants on the island.

Deras-Mejia allegedly entered the country unlawfully “on an unknown date, at an unknown location, without being inspected, admitted or paroled by a U.S. immigration officer,” ICE said in a news release Wednesday.

Nantucket police arrested Deras-Mejia, of the MS-13 gang, on August 26, and emergency response officers arrested him on September 12. He remains in custody.

MS-13, short for the Mara Salvatrucha, was founded in Los Angeles in the 1980s to protect Salvadoran immigrants who had escaped a civil war in their homeland from other gangs.

MS-13 has become a “well-organized organization deeply involved in lucrative illegal enterprises and notorious for using violence to achieve its objectives,” the Justice Department said.

“Angel Gabriel Deras-Mejia unlawfully entered the United States and proceeded to Massachusetts to apparently commit acts of violence,” Todd M. Lyons, director of the ERO Boston Field Office, said in a statement. “To make matters worse, Deras-Mejia is a documented member of a notorious transnational criminal organization and poses a significant threat to the people of Nantucket.”

ICE agents conducted “targeted enforcement actions in coordination with the Nantucket Police Department” earlier this month, ERO Boston spokesperson James Covington said in a statement, according to the hyperlocal Nantucket Current.

“The actions targeted several egregious non-citizen offenders,” Covington said.

The Massachusetts Republican Party called the actions of the illegal immigrants “horrendous and shameful.”

“These individuals should never have been in the United States in the first place,” the Republican Party said in a statement Wednesday, “and the incidents themselves are a direct result of our broken immigration system. Members of this close-knit community are terrified that these individuals were walking freely among them.”

Reading from a prepared statement Wednesday evening, Nantucket Select Board Chairwoman Brooke Mohr said, “The city will make available resources and counseling services they may need.”

“We recognize that this activity may have been disturbing to many of our residents,” Mohr said. “It is our understanding that ICE’s action was not arbitrary, but targeted…

“We are committed to the safety and well-being of members of our community, regardless of their immigration status,” Mohr added, “and are relieved that these offenders have been apprehended by the appropriate authorities and no longer pose a threat to our community. We stand with the victims of these traumatic crimes and their families.”

On Tuesday, ICE announced that 41-year-old Guatemalan noncitizen Felix Alberto Perez-Gomez was arrested on September 11 on charges of sexual assault and battery on a person 14 years of age or older.

Perez was previously arrested in Pennsylvania in June 2011 for reckless driving and recklessly endangering another person. A local court sentenced him to a year’s probation before an immigration judge ordered him removed from the US

Details about Perez’s unlawful return to the country are not known.

As the Herald reported last week, the arrest during the multi-day operation included a 49-year-old Salvadoran charged with 11 alleged sex crimes – including aggravated rape of a child.

Another Salvadoran, a 28-year-old national, was accused of raping a child from Nantucket, and a Brazilian national was arrested after being accused of sexually assaulting an islander.

Originally published: September 26, 2024 at 6:24 PM