After six months of waiting, $900 in application fees, one lost job offer, thousands of dollars in lost salary and untold emotional strain, a Martha's Vineyard immigration story ended happily last week. If there is a moral to the tale, it is that the Department of Homeland Security is a bureaucracy as easy to navigate as Cape Horn in a squall, and despite its reputation, the Edgartown post office is not always to blame.

Danubia Campos can remember back six or seven years ago when she knew every Brazilian on Martha's Vineyard.

Ten Brazilian immigrants, said to be in violation of deportation orders, left the Island yesterday morning in handcuffs - hauled away by United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents aboard a United States Coast Guard vessel.