On Thursday night at the regional high school, two Island women, Lynn Ditchfield and Rebecca McCarthy, gave a presentation on their recent journey to the Artesia Detention Center in New Mexico to help Central American refugees seeking asylum from violence in their home countries.

In January 1851, according to the diary of Jeremiah Pease, a British boat “castaway” off Muskeget with 256 Irish on board. Four froze to death. Who were those nameless people? From the date it is clear they were fleeing from a country that had become a graveyard to seek opportunity and salvation in America. Turning their backs forever on families and communities decimated by famine and oppression, these uninvited and undocumented immigrants hoped to find work and food.

After six months of waiting, $900 in application fees, one lost job
offer, thousands of dollars in lost salary and untold emotional strain,
a Martha's Vineyard immigration story ended happily last week. If
there is a moral to the tale, it is that the Department of Homeland
Security is a bureaucracy as easy to navigate as Cape Horn in a squall,
and despite its reputation, the Edgartown post office is not always to
blame.

Danubia Campos can remember back six or seven years ago when she knew every Brazilian on Martha's Vineyard.

Ten Brazilian immigrants, said to be in violation of deportation
orders, left the Island yesterday morning in handcuffs - hauled
away by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents aboard
a United States Coast Guard vessel.