PROVINCETOWN — Thirty-six of the 38 people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket more than three weeks ago have still not been identified by ICE. When asked for details by reporters, a spokesman for the agency provided some answers. Not all of them could be confirmed by fact-checking.
ICE agents swept through the islands on the morning of May 27, conducting simultaneous raids resulting in the arrest of “around 40 illegal aliens,” according to an agency press release.
Officers arrived unannounced, pulling people from their cars, homes, and job sites with little explanation. Over the next few days, fear gripped the area. Many in the immigrant community refused to leave their homes — missing work and relying on others for food — worried that they could be next.
In the immediate aftermath of the raids, state officials called on ICE to be more transparent in its operations. Gov. Maura Healey slammed the agency in a press conference one day after the raids.
“This is part of the problem that we’re seeing with ICE across the country and certainly here in Massachusetts,” Healey said. “People are being picked up, and we have no information about their circumstances. We need to get answers.”
But ICE officials have remained tight-lipped. They put out a press release on June 2 saying the island raids resulted in the arrest of “one child sex predator and a member of a violent transnational gang.” The raids were part of Operation Patriot, a monthlong enforcement operation that was described as targeting “transnational organized crime, gangs and egregious illegal alien offenders,” according to the press release.
An ICE official, who spoke on condition that he not be named, told the Independent on June 14 that only two of the 38 arrested on the islands had committed crimes against people.
The 38 Arrested
Asked for further details, the spokesperson on Sunday identified the two people who had committed the crimes specified in the June 2 press release as Luciano Pereira DeOliveira and Juan Humberto Vasquez-Villalta.
DeOliveira has been charged with statutory rape of a child in Edgartown and with possession and dissemination of child pornography. He was indicted by a grand jury in December after pleading not guilty, and the charges are still pending.
But the ICE spokesperson at first told the Independent that DeOliveira had been “convicted” of those crimes. Asked for documentation, the spokesperson acknowledged that the original statement was inaccurate.
Vasquez-Villalta, according to the spokesperson, is a verified MS-13 gang member who has been convicted of assault. The Independent could not confirm Vasquez-Villalta’s involvement in MS-13 or find evidence of his having been convicted rather than charged with a crime.
Information about the remaining 36 people arrested for immigration violations remains scarce. Their names and whereabouts have not been released by ICE. Ten had previously been ordered to leave the country, according to the ICE spokesperson, and two others had illegally re-entered the U.S. after having been deported.
The number of people who have already been deported and the locations of those who are still being held in custody have similarly not been disclosed.
The spokesperson confirmed that all have begun facing removal proceedings and they “will have a date with a DOJ immigration judge” but did not specify when or where those hearings would occur.
Healey’s Rebuke
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu signed an executive order on June 10 seeking greater transparency from federal immigration officials. At a press conference that day, she said Boston would pursue more information about who ICE is arresting and why.
Wu also took aim at the agency’s increased activity in the state, telling ICE officials to “take a time out.”
“Reassess what you are doing and how you are doing it,” she said.
But ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons defended the agency’s operations and accused Wu and Healey of siding with “lawlessness over law and order” in a June 15 statement.
“Their prioritization of criminal aliens in communities across the state should speak volumes to their constituents,” Lyons wrote.
In a sharp rebuke, Healey wrote that “ICE should be focusing on those with criminal backgrounds, like they said they were going to do.”
Healey also denounced ICE’s detaining Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, an 18-year-old from Milford who was arrested while driving to volleyball practice. Da Silva has since been released and spoken extensively about his experience in a Burlington facility.
“Nobody should be in here,” he said to reporters.
An ICE spokesperson disputed allegations that Da Silva was mistreated. In a June 5 statement, the spokesperson wrote that people in custody are given “ample food, regular access to phones, showers, and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.”
But one young woman detained in the May 27 raids was given nothing but a small bottle of water for 24 hours and pressured by agents to voluntarily deport herself, according to her employer.
‘Far From Home’
The woman was arrested on her way to work after being pulled over by ICE officers. Her employer, who asked not to be named for fear or retaliation, said she entered the U.S. on parole from Brazil in 2003 and that she does not have a criminal record.
During her arrest, the officers repeatedly referred to her by the wrong name, and she continuously tried to correct them, according to her employer.
The woman, her employer said, was moved to a detention facility in Texas, where she is still being held — despite having been arrested in Massachusetts.
Manfredo Felipe Castanon Perez, who was taken by ICE in the same raid, as reported by the Nantucket Current, is being held in a facility in Adams County, Miss. He was moved there from the ICE facility in Plymouth.
In recent months, moving detainees arrested by ICE in the Northeast to facilities in the South has become an increasingly common practice.
Immigration lawyer Ian Campbell said that while determining the motivations for such moves is difficult, decisions appear to be reflecting political opinions. “I would be unsurprised if they’re more likely to get a removal order in Southern states compared to blue states.”
A spokesperson for ICE did not respond to a request for comment on the movement of detainees to the South.
Immigration judges in Texas and Louisiana are among the least likely to grant asylum applications. And from late January to late February this year — just after Trump took office — out-of-state ICE transfers were the highest they’ve been in at least 13 years, according to a Bloomberg investigation.
Harvard Law School lecturer and former immigration lawyer Pedro Spivakovsky-Gonzalez said that the movement of detainees can detrimentally affect their chances of legal victory.
“Detention itself is a very alienating experience, but if you’re far from home, it’s much more strained,” he said. “You can’t rely on the same type of support from your lawyer, your family, or others as you try to keep hope alive in your immigration case. It essentially has the effect of limiting meaningful access to justice for many of these litigants.”
