BOSTON — The number of illegal immigrants that ICE Boston agents arrested during a multi-day operation on Nantucket earlier this month has grown to five, with details of an apprehended MS-13 gang member the latest to come out.

Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston arrested 30-year-old Salvadoran Angel Deras-Mejia on Sept. 12, charging the documented gang member with disorderly conduct and two counts of assault and battery on a household member.

The arrest came a day after a 41-year-old Guatemalan noncitizen was charged with a sex crime against a Nantucket resident and two days after ICE apprehended three other illegal immigrants on the island.

Deras-Mejia is said to have unlawfully entered the country “on an unknown date, at an unknown location, without being inspected, admitted or paroled by a U.S. immigration official,” ICE said in a Wednesday release.

Nantucket police arrested Deras-Mejia, of the MS-13 gang, on Aug. 26, and officers with ERO arrested him on Sept. 12. He remains in custody.

MS-13, short for the Mara Salvatrucha, formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s to protect Salvadoran immigrants who escaped a civil war in their home country from other gangs.

MS-13 has grown into a “well-organized and is heavily involved in lucrative illegal enterprises, being notorious for its use of violence to achieve its objectives,” according to the Department of Justice.

“Angel Gabriel Deras-Mejia unlawfully entered the United States then made his way to Massachusetts, to apparently commit crimes of violence,” ERO Boston Field Office Director Todd M. Lyons said in a statement. “To make matters worse, Deras-Mejia is a documented member of a notorious transnational criminal organization and represents a significant threat to the residents of Nantucket.”

ICE agents conducted “targeted enforcement actions in coordination with Nantucket Police” earlier this month, ERO Boston Spokesperson James Covington said in a statement, per the hyperlocal Nantucket Current.

“The actions … targeted several egregious noncitizen offenders,” Covington said.

The Massachusetts GOP called the acts committed by the illegal immigrants “appalling and shameful.”

“These individuals should never have been in the United States in the first place,” the GOP said in a statement Wednesday, “and the incidents themselves are a direct consequence to our broken immigration system. Members of this tight-knit community are terrified that these individuals were walking freely among them.”

Nantucket Select Board Chairwoman Brooke Mohr read from a prepared statement Wednesday night, saying, “The town will make available resources and counseling services that they may need.”

“We recognize that this activity may have been unsettling to many of our residents,” Mohr said. “It is our understanding that ICE action was not random but targeted …

“We are committed to the safety and wellbeing of the members of our community regardless of their immigration status,” Mohr added, “and are relieved that these offenders have been apprehended by the appropriate authorities and are no longer a threat to our community. We stand in support of the victims of these traumatic crimes and their families.”

On Tuesday, ICE announced that 41-year-old Guatemalan noncitizen Felix Alberto Perez-Gomez was arrested on Sept. 11 on a charge of indecent assault and battery on a person 14 years or older.

Perez had previously been arrested in June 2011 in Pennsylvania for reckless driving and recklessly endangering another person. A local district court sentenced him to a year of probation before an immigration judge ordered him removed from the U.S.

Details of Perez’ unlawful reentry back into the country are not known.

As the Herald reported last week, arrests during the multi-day operation also included a 49-year-old Salvadoran charged with 11 alleged sex crimes – including aggravated rape of a child.

Another Salvadoran, a 28-year-old national, was charged with raping a Nantucket child, and a Brazilian national was arrested after being charged with sexually assaulting an island resident.

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