Massachusetts politicians are demanding more details on the immigration arrests that took place on the Vineyard and Nantucket last week.
But, so far, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has not been providing much.
U.S. Rep. William Keating, a Democrat who represents the Vineyard in the House, wrote to the heads of Homeland Security, ICE, the FBI and the Department of Justice this week, asking the agencies how many people were arrested on the Island, how they were targeted and if there was probable cause to detain them.
“The public has no idea who was detained — or whether they were here legally through temporary protected status or as asylees,” Mr. Keating said in a statement. “The public doesn’t even know whether they were U.S. citizens who were misidentified, or who fit a certain profile and didn’t have identification on them when they were pulled over by masked federal agents.”
ICE has given few details about who was arrested when masked federal agents came to the Island in unmarked vehicles. The agency has said that about 40 people were detained on the Islands, but did not divulge how many people were arrested on each Island or publicly stated who is being held in detention centers.
Only one man on the Vineyard has been identified by ICE. Luciano DeOliveira, 29, was picked up by officers on May 27, ICE spokesperson James Covington confirmed this week.
Mr. DeOliveira was indicted by a Dukes County grand jury in December on two counts of aggravated rape of a child, posing a child in a sexual act, distributing material of a child in a sexual act, possesion of child pornography and dissemination of obscene materials to a child.
Mr. DeOliveira had been taken to an ICE detention facility in Strafford, N.H., according to ICE records.
Oak Bluffs police brought the Island charges against Mr. DeOliveira last year, saying they found videos on Mr. Deoliveira’s phone of him raping a 15-year old.
Mr. DeOliveira, who had been living in Oak Bluffs, had a pretrial hearing in his Dukes County Superior Court case on April 29. He was scheduled to be back in court on June 18 for another hearing, though it is unclear if that case will move forward.
In a statement Monday, ICE said the Vineyard arrests were part of a larger operation in Massachusetts, known as Operation Patriot, that arrested almost 1,500 people who were in the country illegally.
“This was a massive, multiagency immigration enforcement operation aimed at keeping our region safe from habitual lawbreakers who have flouted our country’s immigration laws and, in many cases, committed violent crimes that have endangered our families, friends, and neighbors for far too long,” Kimberly Milka, an acting special agent, said in the statement.
ICE highlighted Mr. DeOliveira’s arrest in a press release this week and posted a picture of him with his hands behind his back in Menemsha, flanked by officers. Though he is not named in the release, Mr. Covington later confirmed it was Mr. DeOliveira.
Mr. DeOliveira’s case even caught the attention of the White House, which also posted on social media about the arrest.
As of Tuesday, Mr. Keating had not heard back from ICE on the arrests after sending his June 2 letter. The letter included 19 questions about the arrests, including requests for the full list of detainees, queries about if families were notified and if physical appearance of occupants was considered when stopping vehicles on the Islands, as well as in Plymouth.
“While the specifics of the detentions last week on the Islands and in Plymouth still remain less than clear, and ICE has not provided the information I have requested, this Administration has a responsibility to the American public to not only adhere to the rule of law but also to be transparent in their actions,” he said.
Mr. Keating also questioned why other federal agencies, which have other duties under the law, were involved in the raids.
“I am profoundly concerned that the crucial work of these agencies — work explicitly assigned by Congress — is being jeopardized by the reassignment of their agents to conduct fishing-expedition traffic stops in Massachusetts,” he wrote. “The deployment of these agents for immigration purposes must be disrupting ongoing investigations and diverting them from their core missions.”
Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey in the days after the arrests also called on ICE to hand over more details on the arrests. ICE did not respond to multiple requests from the Gazette for more information about the arrests on the Vineyard and Nantucket.
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