Federal immigration authorities arrested well over 1,000 illegal migrants during a month-long enforcement operation across Massachusetts.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, working alongside a slate of other federal partners, arrested 1,461 illegal migrants throughout the Bay State during the month of May, the agency announced Monday. Most of the apprehended foreign nationals carried significant criminal histories, such as drug traffickers, sex offenders and murderers.
“Make no mistake: Every person that we arrested was breaking our immigration laws, but most of these individuals had significant criminality,” ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston acting Field Office Director Patricia Hyde said in a prepared statement.
“They are criminal offenders who victimized innocent people and traumatized entire communities — murderers, rapists, drug traffickers, child sex predators and members of violent transnational criminal gangs,” Hyde continued. “Some were convicted of violent crimes in the United States, and others were wanted for criminality in their native countries. All made the mistake of attempting to subvert justice by hiding out in Massachusetts.”
Of the roughly 1,500 arrested by ICE agents, more than half had serious criminal convictions or charges, according to the agency. Nearly 800 of the migrant offenders were either convicted or charged of crimes in the U.S. or in another country.
Members of notorious criminal syndicates were also targeted in Operation Patriot, including MS-13, Tren de Aragua, 18th Street and Trinitarios gangbangers, ICE leadership confirmed. A total of 277 of those nabbed had been previously ordered removed by an immigration judge, but had refused to comply and remained illegally in the U.S.
“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,” FBI Boston acting Special Agent in Charge Kimberly Milka said in a press release.
“Together, with our partners, we have identified and removed hundreds of illegal alien offenders from the Commonwealth, including murderers, gang members, child predators and a possible associate of a suspected terrorist, and our work is not done,” Milka continued.
Operation Patriot was assisted by the FBI, Customs and Border Protection, the State Department and several other federal agencies — a multi-agency effort that has become the norm under the current administration.
Since returning to power, the Trump White House has marshaled in the service of numerous other major agencies to assist with immigration enforcement. A directive handed down in January from the Department of Homeland Security grants members from across the federal government many of the same powers as ICE agents.
The Trump administration has made numerous other reforms designed to give ICE agents more freedom to carry out their mission, such as nixing “sensitive locations” that prohibited enforcement actions in certain locations, such as hospitals, schools or churches. The previous limitation gave illegal immigrants the ability to hide from ICE apprehension.
The reforms have been working — the White House announced in April that it arrested more than 151,000 illegal migrants and deported more than 135,000 during its first 100 days in office.
The city of Boston, and the entire state of Massachusetts, are considered sanctuary havens by immigration observers — the administration included both localities in a since-deleted public list of sanctuary jurisdictions across the U.S., and the Center for Immigration Studies labels the entire state as such in its running list of sanctuary localities.
Following President Donald Trump’s re-election victory, the Boston City Council in December 2024 voted to reaffirm its sanctuary city status.
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