On Monday, ICE officials strongly defended the agency’s decision to arrest a young Massachusetts high school student, Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, on his way to volleyball practice, stating that he was “in this country illegally.”
Authorities took the 18-year-old Brazilian native into custody over the weekend. The boy has been in the United States since 2012. His arrest sparked a large protest on Sunday in Milford, a suburb of Boston where Gomes Da Silva lives with his family. The state’s Democratic governor, Maura Healey, later said she was “troubled and outraged” by the situation.
ICE director Todd Lyons later spoke about the case while announcing the results of an intensive immigration enforcement campaign in Massachusetts, which led to the arrest of about 1,500 people last month.
Lyons and Patricia Hyde, acting director of ICE enforcement and removal operations in Boston, said that Gomes was not the target of the investigation that led to his arrest and that authorities were instead looking for his father, who remains at large. “So obviously, he isn’t the father of the year because he brought his son up here illegally as well,” Lyons added.
The Milford High School student was driving his father’s car when he was arrested following a traffic stop. Lyons added that whenever authorities encounter someone who is in the country illegally, “we will take action.” “We’re doing the job that ICE should have been doing all along,” Lyons said. “We enforce all immigration laws.”
“The actions by ICE in arresting a teenager on his way to volleyball practice are outrageous,” Miriam Conrad, Gomes’ lawyer, said instead. “Locking up a high school junior with no criminal record does not make the community safer. It sows fear among immigrants.”
Meanwhile, a federal judge issued an order preventing immigration authorities from transferring Gomes out of Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice while the court reviews a lawsuit claiming that the boy is being detained illegally. It also claims that Gomes entered the United States on a student visa and that although his permit had expired, he was about to apply for asylum.
