On September 12, ICE Enforcement and Operations (ERO) officers in the tony vacation getaway of Nantucket, Mass., arrested a 30-year-old MS-13 member who entered the United States illegally, just one of several illegal entrant criminals the agency has nabbed there in recent weeks. Each crossed illegally without being apprehended — and those arrests explain why the Border Patrol chief told CBS News in March that such “got-aways” are “keeping [him] up at night”.
“Got-Aways”. While the descriptor “got-away” may sound like slang, it’s actually a term of art, defined in federal statute as “an unlawful border crosser who- (A) is directly or indirectly observed making an unlawful entry into the United States; (B) is not apprehended; and (C) is not a turn back”.
Often, that definition is used informally to denote what are called “known got-aways”, aliens spotted coming in illegally whom Border Patrol agents are unable to apprehend. Some illegal migrants are never even spotted when traipsing across the border, and they are referred to as “unknown got-aways”.
The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability reported on September 17 that there have been 1.9 million got-aways of both varieties since the outset of the Biden-Harris administration, an unvetted population of individuals greater than the number of residents in 11 states or the District of Columbia.
The “unvetted” part of that statement is particularly troublesome, because as U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens admitted to CBS News in March:
what's keeping me up at night is the ... known got-aways. ... Why are they risking their lives and crossing in areas where we can't get to? Why are they hiding? What do they have to hide? What are they bringing in? What is their intent? Where are they coming from? We simply don't know the answers to those questions. Those things for us are what represent the threat to our communities.
All good questions, but “what is their intent” is the best. In any event, the chief is dispositively correct: Many got-aways do represent a threat to our communities, as the recent wave of ICE arrests of criminal aliens in Nantucket demonstrates.
Angel Gabriel Deras-Mejia. ICE ERO’s Boston Field Office announced in a September 25 press release, that it had arrested a 30-year-old El Salvadoran national, Angel Gabriel Deras-Mejia, who had entered at an unknown place and time without inspection in Nantucket.
His illegal entry should have been sufficient for officers to nab him under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), but not under procrustean restrictions placed on immigration enforcement by DHS Alejandro Mayorkas in September 2021.
Simply being here illegally is not enough for the secretary — ICE officers must first wait until an illegal entrant commits a serious crime, and even then, can’t act before first determining that the offender doesn’t suffers from some ailment or have any relatives who work for the government (among other so-called “mitigating factors” that weigh against enforcement Mayorkas created from whole cloth).
Fortunately, Deras-Mejia gave officers plenty to work with, at least according to ICE: He’s “a documented member of MS-13” and has been arrested by Nantucket police in late August for “two counts of assault and battery on a household member and disorderly conduct”.
Felix Alberto Perez-Gomez. ICE’s Boston media shop has been pretty busy of late, because on September 24, they also announced that ICE officers there arrested 41-year-old Guatemalan national Felix Alberto Perez-Gomez, yet another alien got-away.
Perez-Gomez has quite the rap sheet. He was here illegally when he was first arrested by ICE ERO in June 2011, after he was stopped for reckless driving and recklessly endangering another person by police in Pennsylvania.
He was ordered removed and deported shortly thereafter (apparently the immigration system wasn’t “broken” back then, as the vice president insists it is now, though it’s not clear what happened in the interim), reentering illegally without apprehension again thereafter.
In August, Perez-Gomez was arraigned in state district court in Nantucket for indecent assault and battery on a person 14 years or older, and ICE ERO officers took him yet again into custody on September 11.
The facts of the offense with which he has been charged aren’t clear, but Massachusetts law defines assault and battery on one 14 and older as “indecent” when “if it involves touching portions of the anatomy commonly thought private”.
ICE claims he was “charged with sex crimes against a Nantucket resident”, which in that context makes sense.
Elmer Sola. On September 20, ICE Boston reported that officers had arrested Elmer Sola, a 49-year-old Salvadoran national facing 11 state child sex charges (three counts of aggravated rape of child and eight counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14) on September 10, again in Nantucket.
As the ICE ERO Boston Field Office director explained:
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. ... The officers of ERO Boston will not tolerate such a threat to the children of our New England neighborhoods.
That sounds like a pretty reasonable mission statement to me. Perhaps Secretary Mayorkas may want to add it as an addendum to his September 2021 immigration-enforcement “guidelines” but expand it beyond just New England proper.
Gean Do Amaral Belafronte. Next up is Brazilian national Gean Do Amaral Belafronte, yet another alien with a checkered immigration history who last entered as a got-away migrant.
He first, however, came legally to the United States in an unspecified status in October 2018 but did something (again unspecified) to violate the terms of his lawful admission. He thereafter voluntarily departed the United States — likely in lieu of deportation — in April 2021.
Apparently finding the legal immigration route too complicated (or forestalled from accessing it twice), Belafronte instead entered illegally on his second go-round, at an unknown time and place without inspection and without being apprehended.
He must not have been gone from the United States long, because Nantucket Police arrested him in June 2021 (less than two months after he departed), charging him with indecent assault and battery on a person 14 years or older — the same sort of “sex crime” Perez-Gomez was arrested for.
Someone at the state level thought it wise to release Belafronte, however, and when he failed to show up for his district court arraignment, the court issued a default judgment for his arrest.
The Nantucket police eventually found the Brazilian national in March and arrested him, only to have the district court release him on bail three days later.
Plainly ICE ERO Boston considered Belafronte to be a danger and a flight risk even if the court didn’t, because its officers took him into custody on September 11, where he remained as of the office’s September 17 press release.
Bryan Daniel Aldana-Arevalo. ICE officers have been busy in Nantucket, arresting yet another alien there, 28-year-old Salvadoran Bryan Daniel Aldana-Arevalo, on September 10.
Once more, Aldana-Arevalo was a got-away, having entered the United States illegally without being apprehended. As the ICE press release explains:
Nantucket authorities arraigned Aldana July 26 in Nantucket District Court for one count of rape of a child with a 10-year age difference and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.
The Nantucket District Court released Aldana on bail July 29.
Again, why exactly the state released an illegal migrant charged with child rape and other offenses is not clear, but Boston ICE ERO considered him a big enough threat to take Aldana-Arevalo into its custody and hold him, pending removal proceedings.
Four Aliens Charged With Child Sex Crimes, and One Documented Gang Member. The Insider’s Guide to Nantucket describes the place as “a town, a county, and an island”. Unfortunately, it also became a haven for four aliens charged with child sex crimes and a documented MS-13 gang member, each of whom came here as an illegal “got-away” migrant.
These cases have become part of an ongoing debate over whether immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than the native population.
That’s largely because former President (and GOP presidential candidate) Donald Trump has made migrant crime a pillar of his 2024 campaign, triggering opposing media “fact checkers” to argue things like “Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans, studies find,” (from NPR).
Most of these analyses blur the distinction between “immigrants” generally and the “undocumented” population in particular. That’s a crucial difference, especially when talking about criminal got-aways.
Aliens who come legally must submit to two separate criminal vetting processes before they’re admitted: one by consular officers before they are issued the visas; and again by CBP officers at the ports of entry prior to admission.
Legal immigrants should therefore be much less prone to criminality than the population as a whole, for the same reason Navy SEALs are better swimmers than the attendees at a local water aerobics class, and more skilled at survival than weekend campers — they’ve had to prove it.
Aliens caught entering illegally receive much less scrutiny before they’re released (as most are under the current administration, even though the INA mandates detention). That vetting largely involves checks of U.S. databases and maybe the few foreign intelligence sources DHS has access to, but at least (ideally) there are some checks, albeit truncated and imperfect.
Got-aways aren’t screened at all when they come in and start helping themselves to all the United States has to offer and, as Chief Owens suggests, many evade apprehension because they’re hiding something, or have ill intent.
Whether the five aliens arrested by ICE in Nantucket offended abroad and came here illegally to prey upon the innocent is unknown and likely unknowable. But what is clear — assuming the five are guilty of the crimes alleged — is that if the immigration laws were enforced, there’d be a lot fewer innocents subjected to predation.