EDGARTOWN, Mass.—A saline wind rattles the shutters of the Harborside Inn overlooking Chappaquiddick Island, the last known resting place of Ted Kennedy’s American dream. A low fog settles, concealing the quiet devastation here in Martha’s Vineyard, where federal immigration officers rounded up dozens of undocumented workers last month in a series of raids the shell-shocked residents have dubbed “The Calamity.” The Washington Post reported this week on how the scrappy island enclave that “prides itself on openness has been left to deal with the painful fallout.” The Washington Free Beacon was determined to investigate, so that’s exactly what we did.
Traveling to Martha’s Vineyard these days is arguably not unlike sneaking into an active war zone. Private air travel to the island’s small airport was significantly delayed due to a shortage of baggage handlers and it refused to accommodate an aircraft larger than a puny Embraer Phenom 300, which made for a disappointedly turbulent ride for your humble correspondent and accompanying photographer. A fixer we hired to drive us around stopped returning our messages on Slack. The nearest Uber Black was almost 20 minutes away, forcing us to hail a taxi with filthy cloth seats. Our driver, Rocco, told us about the couple he had just dropped off at the airport.
“They cried the whole way there,” he said. “Housekeeper got deported before she could put the wet clothes in the dryer. ICE wouldn’t release her, even for 10 minutes to take the garbage out or dust the elevator. I think their underwear was still wet. Smelled like hell. It was really sad, you know? Nobody left to walk the dog so they had to put her down.”
The road into Edgartown was littered with the detritus of devastation. Excavators, lawnmowers, and catering vans sat abandoned like American tanks in the mad rush to evacuate Kabul, some with their engines still running. A burned out G-Wagon was still smoldering in the Lululemon parking lot off Main Street. Rocco explained that the owner, a public relations executive for an ethical real estate firm in Boston, had panicked after puncturing a tire on the way home from a boozy dinner at Detente. “Her car guy left town when ICE came,” he said, never losing his solemn expression. “I heard she drives a Subaru now.”
As the traffic grew denser and the stops more frequent, the chaos intensified. A hoard of Ozempic-addled middle-aged women emerged out of nowhere, clutching labradoodle puppies and fist-fulls of large bills. They shrieked hysterically, in tones too guttural to comprehend, and smacked on car windows, leaving skid marks from bled-through bandages on their left hands. Rocco was unfazed. “They want to pay you to collect the dog feces,” he said. “The injuries they did themselves.” Not from self-harm, he explained, but because they’d been forced to slice their own avocados since the raiders arrived.
As soon as we were clear of the zombie scrum, Rocco stopped suddenly and told us to get out of the car. When we protested, he pulled a revolver from the glove box and pointed it in the direction of the Edgartown Inn. “Look there,” he commanded. “It’s no good.” Rocco had a point. The northern stretch of Water Street was abandoned as far as the eye could see, yet the ground itself appeared to move. A slithering mess of black plastic glistened in the afternoon sun. The car began to vibrate. “Roombas. You see?” Rocco seethed anxiously. “They won’t stop ordering them on Amazon.”
We fled south with our luggage, weaving our way through a cluster of vacuum robots whose batteries had died while trying to consume a large “No Kings” banner with a crudely drawn image of Donald Trump in a tiara performing fellatio on a howitzer. We ducked inside of what we thought was an abandoned cafe—until we saw the shotgun. “No service,” a ruffled custodian barked. “Yes, it’s loaded. And no, we ain’t got no fucking chardonnay.” So we got the hell out of there.
Minutes (that felt like hours) later we joined a makeshift caravan headed further south to Turkeyland Cove, site of the Obama estate. An older gentleman in a “Wall Street Swingers for Harris” t-shirt unburdened himself at our behest. He appeared to have gone days without bathing, botoxing, or even golfing, and had the vacant gaze of a dumb redneck who lost everything in Hurricane Helene. Alas, this poor man, who asked to be referred to as “Alpha Daddy,” actually mattered.
Alpha Daddy recounted the unspeakable trauma endured. When the federals came knocking, the renovation of his oceanfront guest house was only half-way done. The Swedish-engineered infrared sauna had just been delivered, but not installed. The crew’s foreman was taken away in cuffs, while the others fled to parts unknown. He also lost a private chef, two maids, three helicopter pilots, a sommelier/stable master, his live-in mistress, and the secret child his wife didn’t know about. When ICE agents raided the Edgartown Yacht Club and took the shoeshine boy into custody, Alpha Daddy was forced to socialize in the formal dining room with a half-shined pair of Ferragamo driving moccasins. “It’s Hell on Earth,” he grumbled. “Like 9/11 and Pearl Harbor combined.”
We knew that caravan was headed for the Obama compound. It finally occurred to us to ask why.
“Michelle,” he said. “Everyone knows she only hires white slaves. Fully documented.”
The caravan proceeded apace. Alpha Daddy grabbed a pilfered bottle of chardonnay from his rucksack.
“Please,” he whispered. “Can you show me how to open this?”
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