A 25-year-old Haitian national, who authorities say has been convicted of 17 crimes while living in Massachusetts in recent years, was arrested in East Boston last week by agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
The Jan. 22 arrest of Wisteguens Jean Quely Charles, documented by a TV crew attached to FoxNews, was broadcast around the nation and has been used to fuel unsubstantiated rumors of a more widespread round-up of undocumented people in the Greater Boston area triggered by a more aggressive policy under the new Trump administration.
In fact, officials tell the Reporter that the Jan. 22 arrest of Charles was part of a warrant execution that is “business as usual” and not evidence of a stepped-up enforcement campaign or new tactics by local law enforcement.
“Mr. Charles is illegally present the United States and has consistently broken our laws causing significant harm to the residents of Massachusetts,” acting ICE Field Office director Patricia H. Hyde said in a statement specific to Charles’s arrest. “[We] will not tolerate the repeated victimization of our New England neighborhoods. We will continue our mission to apprehend such illegal alien offenders and remove them from our communities.”
According to a statement posted on the ICE website, Charles entered the United States “lawfully” through Miami in 2013, but has subsequently “violated the terms of his lawful admission” by being involved in drug-related, gun and violent offenses for which he was convicted between 2022 and 2024.
The federal authorities say they intended to detain, and presumably, seek to deport Charles after his release from the Norfolk House of Correction in 2023, but he was released “without honoring the immigration detainer.”
Charles is now in custody and is expected to go before a “DOJ immigration judge” next.
His arrest came amid a frenzy of social media posts suggesting that additional ICE-related activity has ticked up in communities around Boston, although the Reporter has been unable to independently verify many of those reports.
Authorities in Boston have told the Reporter that they not seen any indication that there has been any unusual increase in the volume of arrests in recent days.