Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Tuesday that agents at its Boston office arrested 24-year-old Warley Neto on August 23.

“Warley Neto is alleged to have repeatedly assaulted a child in Massachusetts and poses a significant threat to the safety of our neighborhoods,” Todd M. Lyons, Boston field office director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, said in a statement.

Neto was arrested by Border Patrol after illegally entering the United States from Mexico near Paso Del Norte in El Paso, Texas, on March 11, 2018. He was released from Border Patrol custody the following day and ordered to report to an immigration judge, who allowed him to remain in the country.

Neto was first encountered by police in Edgartown, Massachusetts, in February 2023 after he attacked members of his household. He was convicted in June 2023 of strangulation or suffocation, assault and battery on a family member, and threatening to commit a crime and was sentenced to one year in prison, but only served three months.

In January, police in Tisbury, Massachusetts, arrested Neto on a warrant for five counts of rape of a child and five counts of enticement of a minor under the age of 16. The Dukes County Superior Court later indicted Neto.

The arrest was a rare case in New England because local police do not typically cooperate with federal police due to “sanctuary” policies that prohibit the two agencies from working together. Many cities and towns in New England have passed city ordinances that prohibit police from working with federal immigration officials in almost all cases.

In this situation, Lyons said, ICE is grateful that the Dukes County Superior Court in Edgartown allowed the federal agency to take Neto into custody during his release from the Dukes County Sheriff’s Office rather than forcing federal agents to rearrest him after he was released back into society.

“Too often, local jurisdictions refuse to accept immigration arrest warrants and release dangerous offenders into society to reoffend,” said Lyons, who added that immigration officials focus on arresting the “worst noncitizen offenders from New England.”

ICE requested that local police detain Neto for up to 48 hours until he could be transferred to federal custody, and that request was granted.

In recent weeks, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) has increasingly arrested felons accused of violent crimes after being allowed across the border into the country during President Joe Biden’s administration.

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In the past, the immigration authorities in the United States (ICE) arrested illegal immigrants who were wanted in their home country for serious crimes or who had already been in the United States for several years and whose previous convictions ranged from less serious to more serious crimes, such as drunk driving or robbery.

So far in August, ICE has focused more on arresting people with criminal records who entered the U.S. under Biden than on arresting people who entered before Biden took office in 2021.