NANTUCKET ISLAND—The 30-mile journey by high-speed ferry from Hynannis to Nantucket Island takes about an hour over idyllic waters off the geographic elbow of Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Nantucket Harbor in early October is as pretty as an autumn postcard as the boat pulls into the slip. A line of passengers disembarks, many of them with satchels, duffel bags, and rolling suitcases, to board taxis in the parking lot.
The famed cobblestone streets, restaurants, shops, and art galleries in the town center begin to fill up at 11 a.m., even as the tourist season winds down.
Celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Kevin Costner, and Jennifer Lopez own property here. The island peaks at more than 80,000 visitors in July and August, but the number drops to 14,000 permanent residents in the off-season.
Some residents consider Nantucket Island their tiny paradise and the last place you would expect to see the illegal immigration crisis play out.
September was an especially tough month for the community, as federal agents arrested five undocumented male immigrants on charges related to violence and sex crimes.
“I think people are getting really tired of it,” said Toby Brown, chairman of the Nantucket Republican Town Committee of illegal immigration.
“Nantucket is a very liberal island. Many want to say it was only five people—but it’s not. It’s way more than five. If there’s five, you know there’s going to be 10.”
Brown said many Nantucket Island residents were surprised when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived in early September to make the arrests.
Many people refuse to talk about the arrests or the illegal immigration problem because they are afraid of being called racist, he said.
All five men had entered the country illegally and settled on Nantucket Island under the state’s radar; most had been arrested on sex charges early this year and were out on bail or personal recognizance.
On Sept. 12, Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Boston officers arrested Angel Gabriel Deras-Mejia, 30, a known MS-13 gang member from El Salvador in Nantucket.
Local police arrested Deras-Mejia on two counts of assault and battery against a household member and disorderly conduct stemming from incidents on July 21 and Aug. 24.
Deras-Mejia unlawfully entered the United States, “then made his way to Massachusetts, to apparently commit crimes of violence,” according to ERO Boston Field Office Director Todd M. Lyons in a statement.
“To make matters worse, Deras-Mejia is a documented member of a notorious transnational criminal organization (MS-13) and represents a significant threat to the residents of Nantucket.”
Lyons said that Deras-Mejia entered the country “on an unknown date, at an unknown location, without being inspected, admitted or paroled by a U.S. immigration official.”
Felix Alberto Perez-Gomez, 41, from Guatemala, is charged with indecent assault and battery on a person age 14 or over; Elmer Sola, 49, from El Salvador, is charged with 11 sex offenses against a child; Gean Do Amaral Belafronte, 30, who is from Brazil, is charged with indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or over; and Bryan Daniel Aladana-Arevalo, 28, a Salvadoran, is charged with two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.
Dialog Lacking
Brown said the arrests have put a bad spotlight on Nantucket Island as a community dealing with violent crime due to illegal immigration.“We can’t run away from it. We can’t be afraid to talk about real issues in our community with the fear of being considered bad [people],” Brown told The Epoch Times.
“My message is clear: it’s about keeping our community safe.”
Brown said the problem starts at the federal level, that the open borders policy of the Biden administration has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to enter the country illegally and without being checked.
Of those, 435,719 are convicted criminals and 226,847 have criminal charges pending, ICE said.
The American Immigration Council, a pro-immigration advocacy group, disagrees with claims that illegal immigration brings crime.
“Today, some politicians are peddling the same, tired myth, this time of a ’migrant crime surge' among immigrants who recently arrived in the country.”
“In fact, immigrants—including undocumented immigrants—are less likely to commit crimes than the U.S.-born. This is true at the national, state, county, and neighborhood levels, and for both violent and non-violent crime.”
‘Enabling Immigrant Crime’
Brown said he thinks that Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, who is a Democrat, has enabled illegal immigrants, some with criminal backgrounds, to seek sanctuary in the Bay State and costing taxpayers billions to support them.
ERO Boston jumped into action in September, making a number of arrests, including a 50-year-old Salvadoran man in Tisbury, Massachusetts, wanted by authorities in El Salvador for “crimes against humanity.”
“This Salvadoran fugitive is wanted by authorities in his native country to face some extremely serious and disturbing allegations,” said ERO Boston acting Field Office Director Patricia H. Hyde in a statement.
“He attempted to hide out in Massachusetts and escape the law in his home country. He posed a substantial threat to the residents of Martha’s Vineyard.
“ERO Boston will continue to prioritize public safety in all of our New England communities by arresting and removing egregious noncitizen offenders.”
The Salvadoran fugitive was initially apprehended on Nov. 27, 1994, after he entered the United States illegally near Harlingen, Texas. A judge ordered him deported on June 21, 1995.
The man entered the country again illegally and was caught by ERO Boston on May 18, 2010, and deported a year later.
ICE said the man got back into the United States after Salvadoran authorities charged him with crimes against humanity and human trafficking on July 11, 2011.
The agency reported an unidentified 21-year-old man from Brazil was arrested on Martha’s Vineyard on Sept. 18 on suspicion of drug distribution.
ERO Boston also arrested an unnamed Brazilian man, 36, a fugitive sentenced in Brazil to serve 10 years in prison for a conviction for international drug trafficking.
Federal agents later arrested Gustavo Augusto Mroczkoski, 28, also from Brazil, on Martha’s Vineyard for alleged drug, firearms, and ammunition crimes.
Border Patrol agents detained Mroczkoski after he illegally entered the country on May 4 near San Luis, Arizona. Authorities released him in July on personal recognizance.
Martha’s Vineyard is about 38 miles northwest of Nantucket and home to 20,530 permanent residents.
In December 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent two planes with 50 illegal immigrants from Venezuela and Columbia to Martha’s Vineyard to protest against the open borders policy.
Crime in a Small Community
The 46-square-mile island of Nantucket has a length of 14 miles and a width of 3.5 miles. Half of it is conservation land, limiting opportunities for housing development.For nearly a century, Nantucket Island was a major North American whaling port before tourism replaced industry in the late 1880s.
The island’s diverse population and cosmopolitan flavor attract residents and tourists year-round, and many of its inhabitants are recent immigrants from Jamaica and other countries.
The United States Census Bureau reports that 10,159 (70.6 percent) of the island’s inhabitants are white, 2,312 are Hispanic, 1,027 are black, and 264 are Asian.
On Nantucket Island, the median household income is $135,590, with 12,169 total housing units and most home values ranging from $500,000 to more than $1 million.
Brown said that illegal immigration often goes undetected.
He said that illegal migrants arrive on the island with family or friends to stay with. Sometimes, this results in overcrowding of private homes and drains local infrastructure and resources.
“It’s a place where if the family has housing, they move in with them. Nantucket is an easy place to hide out,” Brown said.
“The majority of [legal migrants] that come here are good people,” he said. “They want a better life for their family.
“Then you have the bad guys who come. The ones who can’t do it the right way, there’s a reason, because they’re wanted [by the law] in their own country.”
The Nantucket Police Department and Gov. Healey’s office have yet to respond to emails from The Epoch Times asking for comment.
Brooke Mohr, the chairwoman of the Nantucket Selectboard, did not respond to an Epoch Times’ request for comment about plans to address illegal immigration and violent crime.
On Oct. 2, Mohr spoke publicly for 54 seconds about the ICE arrests in September.
“The town of Nantucket Selectboard and municipal administration are aware of the recent arrests made by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the island,” Mohr said.
“We recognize that this activity may have been unsettling to many of our residents. It is our understanding that the ICE action was not random but targeted toward the arrest of four known individuals who committed violent crimes on the island of Nantucket.
“Let me clear. We are committed to the safety and well-being of members of our community regardless of their immigration status and are relieved that these offenders have been apprehended by the appropriate authorities and are no longer a threat to our community.
How Many Criminals?
Christopher Lauzon, a Republican candidate for state senate from Barnstable to represent the Cape and Islands District, said that illegal immigration has been a problem on Nantucket Island for a long time.“The biggest problem is we don’t know who these people are when they don’t come through the proper channels.
“So you get a situation over the past month on Nantucket where you have these dangerous, really heinous criminals on the island, impacting people in the community.
“Those crimes never would have happened if they hadn’t been allowed to remain in the community.”
Lauzon said most legal immigrants are honest and hard-working and don’t support illegal immigration.
“There are varying levels of understanding of the people who are not here legally,” Lauzon told The Epoch Times.
“Some of them don’t want them here at all; some people are willing to look the other way as long as they’re not committing crimes.
“But the bottom line is anyone who is here illegally, they don’t belong here if they didn’t come through the proper channels.”
A faulty interpretation of the 1983 Right to Shelter Law in Massachusetts by the Healey administration is what makes illegal immigration possible, Lauzon said.
The state created the law initially to help women and families of domestic violence, he said.
“It’s really been misappropriated since Gov. Healey came into office,” Lauzon said.
“We’ve had tens of thousands of migrants coming into the state and getting shelter through that program, which is not what it’s for, which is acting as a magnet to drag more migrants into the state. That really needs to change.”
Lauzon, a father of four, believes that crimes committed by illegal immigrants undermine public safety while illegal immigration robs the community of resources and peace of mind.
State and local officials could do a better job tracking violent offenders, but the response so far has been “limited.”
“It’s a limited response from what I’ve seen. There’s a lot of hesitancy to even comply with ICE—and that’s a statewide issue, not just on Nantucket. A lot of the courts refuse to comply with ICE detainers. It’s a big problem,” Lauzon said.
“People want to claim that these criminals are not in the community. But at least one of those individuals on Nantucket was confirmed to be an MS-13 gang member.
A Father’s Fear
One Nantucket father said he’s worried there are more migrant criminals on Nantucket Island illegally.“If there’s five, there’s 10. If there’s 10, there’s 15,” the father told The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity.
“How many more on this little island? How come we don’t know more about this issue? We need to be informed of things like this.”
“If we have rapists and murderers in our community, why aren’t we being informed about this? Our police know. Our court systems know. Because they’ve been in court, and they have records.
“Why are we left in the dark when it’s our kids’s health and the well-being of the community?”
“Denial is a good word,” he said.
Not just denial, he added, but fear of speaking out.
“There are also plenty of people who are afraid to speak their minds because it is a small community. Word travels fast. Once some people find out the way you lean, it can affect your livelihood.”
“There are a lot of people who feel the way I do but feel they can’t voice their opinions.”
Some residents say that local businesses, such as landscaping and construction, will hire migrants living on the island illegally and pay them “under the table” to avoid paying taxes and worker benefits or obtaining the required permits.
“Follow the money,” the father said. “These people find out that they can come here, and they can make $30 or $40 an hour and get paid with no questions asked, no repercussions, no issues of licensing or insurance or green cards.”
Several patrons at Nantucket VFW Post 8608 said they didn’t feel any less safe following the ICE arrests.
“If they arrested them, [people] probably feel safer,” said one woman. “Nothing surprises me anymore. It wasn’t a huge invasion. It didn’t disrupt—I didn’t see them.”
“If they do something wrong, the local police will catch them,” another female patron said.
“I’ve lived on Nantucket for 40 years. I’ve never locked my doors,” said another resident, who felt the alleged crimes were essentially family affairs that did not involve legal residents.
But PJ Moody, a resident of Nantucket, said he didn’t think people should be here if they were on the island illegally.
“There should be no illegals, really,” Moody told The Epoch Times.” I think the immigration system is a big problem. It’s really unfair to people that are doing it correctly.
“Let’s start with violent offenders and go from there.”
Moody said that illegal immigration is a national problem, but “it’s one of those things that have been magnified on Nantucket.”
“Nantucket is a very cosmopolitan place. Some so many people have done it the right way,” he said. “Like anywhere, we don’t like violent criminals whether they’re illegal or not.”
