"Requesting Permission To Overbook" - How The Feds Got So Many Unmarked Vehicles To Nantucket During The ICE Raid

When federal agents began arresting people on Nantucket during the May 27th immigration enforcement operation, they fanned out across the mid-island area in numerous unmarked vehicles equipped with lights and sirens as they pulled over cars and approached residences.

Clearly, these vehicles were not rental cars. So, how did they get to Nantucket in such large numbers despite the ferries being fully booked on a busy holiday weekend? In the days after the raid, the Current filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the Steamship Authority to find out more about the logistics of one of the largest immigration enforcement operations in island history.

The request resulted in the Steamship Authority producing 32 pages of heavily redacted emails that show how it accommodated the request from the Department of Homeland Security, despite no spaces being available during the busy Memorial Day Weekend.

The first email inquiry from one of the federal agencies involved in the raid appears to have been sent on Friday, May 23rd, at 1:10 p.m., just several days before the operation began on May 27th. 

"I do not see any reservations available," the person wrote to Steamship Authority supervisors. "Will we be accommodated with the commercial vehicles? Please let me know what I need to do to secure the travel."

The following day, Christine Nyari, the Steamship Authority's Mashpee call center supervisor, wrote an email to Angela Campbell, the SSA's reservations and community relations manager, and Alison Fletcher, the director of shoreside operations, explaining the request and the situation to her superiors.

"I do not have space for these vehicles for DHS (Department of Homeland Security)," Nyari wrote. "Requesting permission to overbook and what I can and cannot do. Last minute request just arrived today."

The term "overbooking" refers to booking a ferry in excess of the allocated spaces on a given trip, according to Steamship Authority communications director Sean Driscoll.

"The only items that were redacted were specifically about reservations so, as you can see, we were not informed in advance why they were traveling," Driscoll said.

With the redactions of the emails, there was no way to confirm that statement.

In a letter to the Current explaining the Steamship Authority's response and the reason for the redactions, Driscoll stated that "Providing details regarding travel arrangements and reservations that are contained in the responsive documents would necessarily require divulging information of a specifically named customer that uses the Authority’s reservation system. Section 4(k) (of the Steamship's enabling act) explicitly authorizes and empowers the Authority to 'maintain the confidentiality of all information relating to specifically named customers using the authority’s reservations system'; it further provides that '[s]uch information shall not be a public record'; and it also requires the Authority to 'obtain the express, written consent of the customer before releasing customer information to a third party for commercial or noncommercial purposes.' The Authority does not have the 'express, written consent' of any customer to provide any information relating to it; therefore, I cannot provide you with any such information."

After publishing a few of the emails on the Current's Instagram account on Thursday, one downtown Nantucket business owner reached out with this comment:

"This was a day where food deliveries to restaurants and grocery stores were interrupted," the business owner stated. "Ask Kinnealy Meats, they were bumped without explanation."

Kinnealy Meats did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

"As a supplier to the island, our reservation was altered due to this situation," another business owner wrote to the Current. "We had to scramble to be able to get our truck over, complete BS on the SSA part."

By the time the ICE raid had concluded on May 27th, 12 people had been taken into custody by federal authorities and transferred off the island by a Coast Guard patrol boat. We wrote about who some of these people are in a follow-up story on May 30th.

Read all the email records obtained by the Current by clicking here and here.