BOSTON — A Salvadoran child rapist booted out of Massachusetts in 2017 snuck right back in under someone else's passport — and it took an anonymous tipline call to finally drag him back into ICE custody.
Wenceslao O. Panameno, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador, is once again in the hands of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and bound for deportation "soonest," the agency announced Monday night.
His rap sheet reads like a sanctuary-state nightmare: a five-year Massachusetts sentence for raping a child, a DUI thrown in for good measure, and a 2017 deportation that apparently meant nothing to him.
— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) May 19, 2026Illegal alien Wenceslao O. Panameno was deported back to El Salvador by ICE in 2017 following a DUI and five-year sentence for RAPING A CHILD in Massachusetts.
Then, a 2025 ICE tipline call led our Boston officers and HSI special agents to a residence where they reintroduced themselves to Panameno, who says he snuck in using a passport with someone else's name.
He's now back in our custody following a year in prison for illegal reentry and will be deported soonest.
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Panameno didn't stay gone for long. He admits he slithered back into the country using a passport with someone else's name on it — and made himself right at home in the Bay State.
It took a 2025 ICE tipline call to do what Massachusetts wouldn't. Boston ICE officers and HSI special agents showed up at a residence and, in the agency's own words, "reintroduced themselves" to the convicted child rapist.
He's done a year in federal prison for illegal reentry. Now he's headed back to El Salvador — for the second time.
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A sanctuary-state success story
Welcome to Maura Healey's Massachusetts, where a man who raped a child can do his five years, get deported, waltz back in under a stolen identity, and live quietly in the community until a stranger drops a dime on him.
State and local cops, hamstrung by Healey's sweeping anti-ICE legislation and the so-called PROTECT Act, do not proactively cooperate with the feds to keep predators like Panameno out of the neighborhoods he was once deported from.
ICE got him this time — no thanks to Beacon Hill.
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