Largest ever ICE operation results in nearly 1,500 illegals arrested in blue state

Operation Patriot, the largest ever ICE operation, resulted in the arrest of nearly 1,500 illegals, including murderers, rapists, drug traffickers and child sex predators, in the deep blue sanctuary city-heavy state of Massachusetts.

Operation Patriot concluded on Saturday after netting 1,461 illegal aliens throughout the Greater Boston area and the state of Massachusetts, which includes numerous sanctuary jurisdictions.

Sources at ICE told Fox News that 790 of those arrested had criminal convictions or charges and 277 had final removal or deportation orders. The sources said that all the targeted criminals were roaming the streets of Massachusetts cities freely before being apprehended.

The operation ran throughout May and included ICE teams from other states in the Northeast and authorities from the FBI, DEA, and ATF.

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Fox News was embedded with ICE Boston on Thursday as part of this operation. While Fox News was embedded with ICE, agents arrested a murderer, two child rapists, including one living next to a playground, one fentanyl trafficker, one adult rapist, and one child sexual assaulter, all within the span of a few hours.

Prior to this, the largest ICE operation was Operation Tidal Wave in Florida, which netted 1,120 arrests. Fox News was told Operation Patriot was significantly more difficult because, unlike Florida, ICE received no local assistance from Massachusetts sanctuary jurisdictions.

Sources said the operation was in direct response to leaders in the city of Boston and Massachusetts refusing to cooperate with ICE.

The sources said "hundreds" of the arrested targets had been released by local sanctuary jurisdictions with ICE detainers ignored. ICE also said it encountered daily interference from anti-ICE activist groups throughout Massachusetts.

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Massachusetts Democratic Governor Maura Healey has responded to ICE's operations in her state with outrage. Healey took to social media on Sunday evening to demand answers after ICE agents arrested 18-year-old Marcelo Gomes, who was an illegal and a junior at Milford High School in Milford, Massachusetts. 

In her post, Healey says she is "disturbed and outraged" and that she wants answers immediately explaining why the student was taken into immigration enforcement's custody.

Healey asserted that "the Trump Administration continues to create fear in our communities, and it's making us all less safe."

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Speaking during a press conference on Monday, acting ICE Director Todd Lyons commented on the resistance from Massachusetts leaders, saying: "If sanctuary cities would change their policies and turn these violent criminal aliens over to us into our custody instead of releasing them into the public, we would not have to go out to the communities and do this."

Lyons said the operation "just showed we need to come back and we're going to keep coming back because ICE is going to make sure that we keep our community safe and keep our neighborhood safe from these sex offenders and these criminal aliens."

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The press conference was held the same day that an illegal alien in Massachusetts named Lorenzo Lopez Alcario was arraigned on charges of raping a child with force. A copy of the charges obtained by Fox News Digital alleges that the child was tied during the rape.

Commenting on the arraignment and on Operation Patriot, Jon Fetherston, a former Massachusetts migrant shelter director, told Fox News Digital that Democratic Governor Maura Healey's resistance to federal immigration enforcement operations is "not only unsafe for ICE agents, it's unsafe for all of us."

Fetherston added that Healey's policies are "creating a climate of lawlessness, where even convicted criminals are shielded from federal enforcement."

"That's not compassion - it's recklessness," he said. 

Healey's office did not immediately respond to a request by Fox News Digital for comment.