By Jason Hopkins
In a span of just two days, federal immigration authorities nabbed four different illegal migrants charged with various sex crimes on a ritzy Massachusetts island beloved by the liberal elite.
Deportation officers arrested Felix Alberto Perez-Gomez, Elmer Sola, Gean Do Amaral Belafronte and Bryan Daniel Aldana-Arevalo on Nantucket, Massachusetts, between Sept. 10 and Sept. 11, according to several press releases by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). All illegal migrants targeted were previously accused of sex crimes against children or other residents in the community.
The latest ICE announcement pertained to the apprehension of Perez-Gomez, a previously deported Guatemalan national who unlawfully returned to the United States before being charged with indecent assault and battery on a person 14 years or older, according to the agency. Deportation officers arrested the Guatemalan man on Sept. 11 on the island, and he remains in the agency’s custody.
Elmer Sola and Bryan Daniel Aldana-Arevalo — both Salvadoran nationals charged locally for sex crimes against children — were arrested on Sept. 10, according to ICE. Sola was arraigned on three counts of aggravated rape of a child and eight counts of indecent assault and battery on a child, and Aldana was arraigned on one count of a rape of a child with a 10-year age difference and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child
“Elmer Sola unlawfully entered the United States, then made his way into our Nantucket community before allegedly committing some horrific and despicable crimes against a child,” Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) Boston Field Office Director Todd Lyons said in a press statement.
“The officers of ERO Boston will not tolerate such a threat to the children of our New England neighborhoods,” Lyons continued.
Deportation officers also nabbed Gean Do Amaral Belafronte on Sept. 11, according to the agency. Belafronte, a Brazilian national living in the U.S. illegally, was arrested by Nantucket police in June 2021 for indecent assault and battery on a person 14 years or older before he was detained by federal immigration authorities.
Nantucket has long been an island inhabited by high-income earners who favor the Democratic Party.
The island’s population in 2022 had a median household income of more than $131,000, according to Data USA, far surpassing the median household income of the entire U.S. that same year, which was slightly under than $75,000. Housing has become so expensive on Nantucket that some homes costing as much as $1 million have been offered through a lottery system as a part of a subsidized housing initiative, according to The New York Post.
President Joe Biden earned more than 70% of the vote in Nantucket County in the 2020 presidential election, according to county election results compiled by CNN.
Nantucket is also a top destination for vacationers from around the country. The busiest summer day on the island now hosts more than 60,000 visitors, according to local reporting.
The Obama family enjoys vacationing in the nearby island of Martha’s Vineyard, and purchased a home in 2019 there worth roughly $15 million. Martha’s Vineyard was subject to national media attention in 2022 when Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew a number of illegal migrants from his state and dropped them off onto the wealthy island.
The entire state of Massachusetts is identified as a “sanctuary” jurisdiction by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that tracks such laws across the country. The group cites a 2017 court decision that limits local authorities’ ability to detain migrants wanted by ICE agents.
The ICE arrests were not initially well received by all residents of the Nantucket community.
“It’s frightening for so many,” Esmeralda Martinez, a member of the Nantucket School Committee, said to the Nantucket Current when word of the ICE raid was first circulated earlier this month. “People are hiding in fear that they might be here for them even though most don’t have a criminal record, but for the mere fact that they are not legally here.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Martinez and asked if she still felt this negatively about the ICE raid, given that those arrested have been accused of child sex abuse or other sexual crimes, but did not immediately receive a response from the school committee member.
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