US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently detained several illegal aliens in Nantucket, Massachusetts, for particular “immigration violations,” claiming to have only targeted “violent offenders.”
According to a press release on Thursday, Sept. 12, from the Nantucket Police Department, ICE agents reached out to city officials on Monday, Sept. 9, and gave them a heads-up about their “planned arrival” on the island. According to those officials, the agents intended “to serve administrative arrest warrants” related to “immigration violations,” specifically for illegal aliens who are “violent offenders.”
ICE asked for the Nantucket Police Department Detective Unit to assist “with local knowledge of geographical areas” of the city and directing agents to “requested addresses.” The press release said the department complied and assisted with identifying the addresses that ICE provided.
Residents said news of the arrests quickly spread throughout the community and that the presence of ICE agents “caused panic for many,” according to one resident, Esmeralda Martinez. She added that the news was “frightening for so many” and that people were “hiding in fear” that the agents were there for them despite not having criminal records. Martinez said these residents are in the US illegally which is why they started to panic.
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, a Democrat, deployed several state officials in June to travel to Texas border communities to warn illegal aliens there that they should not flee to Massachusetts because the state’s facilities and shelters have reached maximum capacity.
Last year, Healey put a cap on the amount of people who can be housed in emergency shelters at 7,500 families. Despite designating themselves as a “sanctuary” state originally, the governor quickly changed her tune as more and more immigrants poured into the state and put a strain on its resources.
In August 2023, she declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts when the number of immigrant families neared 5,600, amounting to around 20,000 new arrivals housed in state-funded facilities, shelters, dormitories, and hotels. Healey also made an “urgent and formal appeal” to the federal government to do something about the border situation and reform immigration policy.
