BOSTON — A previously deported Honduran national with a federal firearms-and-cocaine conviction and confirmed ties to the 18th Street Gang was arrested by ICE Boston on May 5 — and the agency made the announcement public on X on Tuesday morning.

That a previously deported gang member could be found hiding in Massachusetts at all is the natural consequence of a state long structured to keep federal immigration officials at arm's length. The 2017 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling in Lunn v. Commonwealth bars state and local law enforcement from holding people on civil ICE detainers, and the state Senate this session passed the PROTECT Act, which would further restrict state cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Mayor Michelle Wu signed an executive order in February 2026 committing Boston to "protect Bostonians from unconstitutional and violent federal operations" — language aimed squarely at ICE.

Gov. Maura Healey, days earlier in January 2026, filed legislation to bar warrantless civil arrests by ICE at Massachusetts courthouses and to restrict ICE activity in schools, hospitals, daycares and churches. The Boston Globe called it "the most comprehensive effort in the country" to lock ICE out of sensitive locations.

In Washington, Sen. Ed Markey, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and Rep. Ayanna Pressley sent a joint letter to the Trump administration in April 2025 demanding answers about ICE's transfer of Massachusetts detainees to out-of-state facilities — focused on the case of a Turkish Tufts doctoral student picked up in Somerville.

The Serrano-Sarmiento arrest fits a steady rhythm of high-profile takedowns by ICE Boston this spring. Just yesterday, ICE Boston announced the arrest of an alleged MS-13 gang member from El Salvador.

On June 8, the agency arrested a Cuban illegal immigrant living in the Boston area who had piled up 85 arraignments in state court without being removed.

On May 20, ICE Boston pulled a Guatemalan illegal immigrant off Massachusetts streets accused of raping a child.

On May 4, ICE arrested a man hours after a Boston judge freed him on $0 bail following an alleged assault on a police officer.

And at the start of May, ICE Boston put out an April roundup cataloging arrests of child rapists, murder fugitives, and an MS-13 killer in the field office's New England jurisdiction.