At 4 a.m. in a Chelsea strip mall parking lot, ICE officers checked weapons one last time and tightened their bulletproof vests as they prepared to target illegal immigrants charged with rape, assault and weapons offenses in a series of early morning raids.
The small team of officers from Boston’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) converged on the first suspect, referred to as a “target” by the officers, like an urban platoon.
First up was a Salvadoran citizen facing charges related to activity with the 18th Street Gang. He was also charged in his own country with aggravated extortion and participation in a terrorist organization.
The Justice Department says this gang, like MS-13, is “a loosely associated set of cliques” operating in at least 20 states, focused on street-level distribution of drugs including cocaine and heroin. The gang engages in various crimes, including homicide, in the pursuit of their business, according to the Justice Department.
A Herald reporter and photographer rode in a dark green Ford SUV driven by Todd Lyons, the Boston field office director for ERO. The assistant field office director led in a separate car, a dark Chevy Tahoe. These two large vehicles waited in the parking lot of a Home Depot within sight of Crescent Avenue, where the suspect resides.
Agents have been monitoring his actions long enough for his daily routine to be well understood.
“The problem … with all these vehicles, these things stick out like a sore thumb,” Lyons said as the two SUVs were parked next to each other in the parking lot at around 4:30 a.m. “When we’re all sitting next to each other, it looks like a Ford dealership.”
Down on Crescent Avenue was at least one smaller car, and that didn’t look anything like a fed’s SUV or police vehicle.
As Lyons and his crew remained in position, the agent watching the house reported that a man in a hoodie was coming out — right on time to leave for his landscaping job. Moments later, the agent in the surveillance car reported over the radio that the suspect couldn’t start his car and had popped the hood to take a look.
There were several minutes of hesitation, but by 4:56 a.m., the lookout reported that the suspect had fixed the problem and was rolling out.
He would go less than 500 feet before several ERO vehicles would block off Cary Avenue between Broadway and Clark and he would be cuffed against his Toyota Camry, with a Spanish-speaking officer filling him in on his arrest.
It was quite the show of force by the Boston field office. The two teams of roughly six or seven officers, including a supervisor, deployed on this morning with the flashing lights of their unmarked ICE vehicles barring either end of the block, represent the full resources of theNew England regional office at any given time.
But Lyons sees the small size of his office as a possible strength when removing those illegally present in the country who a judge has either already ordered out or who have been designated to face an immigration judge.
“If I had to say there was one good thing about having limited resources for the Boston Field Office, is the fact that we do get to really focus on the worst of the worst,” Lyons said a little before that arrest. “It’s really hard for anybody, I think, to argue why we took an enforcement action on a non-citizen when you see a lot of the criminal histories and the rap sheets on these folks. It’s definitely not someone coming to the United States to make a better life for themselves.
The next suspect was nearby: a Colombian national facing charges out of Suffolk Superior Court of rape, assault and battery on a family or household member, and assault with a dangerous weapon. He walks to work each morning to a Maverick Square bakery, a trip studied by the ERO, which was ready to move in before he clocked in at 6 a.m.
At first, the two SUVs staged at the Liberty Plaza strip mall before making the move to Emmons Street to be closer. The target started to run on Everett Street, but his attempt to flee was ill-fated as the cuffs were on him just as the sun’s first rays cast the street in an early morning glow.
The convoy then moved out on Interstate 93 southbound toward Holbrook for a Brazilian national facing a long list of firearms charges. He had been released on the charges out of Westboro District Court on Feb. 27 without ICE being notified, the agency says.
Around 6:30 a.m., the SUVs parked in the dirt drive of an industrial building around the corner from the target location. The suspect had been hard to track down — with a driver’s license based in Stoughton and a job in Abington — to the house on Beach Road. He didn’t live alone, as could be learned from the two field office directors planning the arrest, but in a full house where at least one of residents carried a gun legally.
The ballistic vests we all wore, which cost at least $1,500 each and hugged like a weighted blanket, were suddenly feeling necessary.
But they weren’t. The target car, a black Nissan sedan of indeterminate model, was stopped outside a convenience store just a ways up and two men were against the hood. Both were young Brazilian men and their faces looked more angry and annoyed and less resigned than the middle-aged men arrested earlier in the morning.
The suspect wore a red hoodie and was shoeless. His brown boots, frayed at the toes to reveal the steel below, and a pair of wool work socks tucked into them, were at the ready beside the passenger-side door.
The driver, who was not targeted by agents, tapped out with his fingers on the roof as he looked around, taking in the situation he found himself in. He would be fingerprinted and there was some kind of border interaction on his record, but the agency didn’t divulge details except to say that he wasn’t the target.
It would be three hours before the next arrest: a Chinese national who had overstayed his visa and was convicted of securities fraud in federal court who was now in home confinement. He’s allowed out of the house in Abington where he lives for a period, for a couple hours after 10 a.m.. It was barely 7 a.m. as the convoy headed out from Holbrook.
At 10:45 a.m., ERO descended on Bay Berry Road in Abington and arrested their target after he had only walked maybe four or five houses down in his regular morning walk. It was another arrest without fuss, and the suspect gave permission for the officers to retrieve the ankle bracelet charger from the home’s master bedroom.
The person apprehended was later identified to the Herald by a law enforcement source as Jiali Wang, 44, who on Aug. 5 last year pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud. He was sentenced in November to time served, ordered to forfeit nearly $7.8 million and to serve nine months of home detention, which he was doing at the time of his arrest.
Each of the four suspects arrested will face a federal immigration judge in the courts administered by the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review. That agency is separate from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
At a nearby house in Abington, an older man gawked from his front door at the police lights and activity on the quiet suburban street.
It was not yet 11 a.m. and the day’s arrest activity came to an end.