DHS: ICE agents detained Mass. student in operation targeting father
June 2 (UPI) -- A Massachusetts high school student was detained over the weekend in an immigration law enforcement operation targeting his father, the Trump administration said Tuesday as it responded to anger over the arrest of 18-year-old Marcelo Gomes da Silva.
Marcelo Gomes da Silva, a Brazilian native, was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Saturday while en route to volleyball practice.
His arrest prompted scores of students at his Milford High School to walk out of class in protest on Monday, and Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey demanded answers from the Trump administration, which she accuses of creating "fear in our communities" through its immigration crackdown.
"I'm disturbed and outraged by reports that a Milford High School student was arrested by ICE on his way to volleyball practice yesterday," Healey said in a statement.
"I'm demanding that ICE provide immediate information about why he was arrested, where he is and how his due process is being protected."
In response, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that da Silva was arrested by ICE agents "engaged in a targeted immigration enforcement operation of a known public safety threat and illegal alien, Joao Paulo Gomes Pereira," who is the teenager's father.
DHS said justification for arresting Gomes Pereira was that local authorities informed ICE that he is in the country undocumented and "has a habit of reckless driving at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour through residential areas."
ICE agents identified Gomes Pereira's vehicle and arrested both the father and son during a traffic stop.
"While ICE officers never intended to apprehend Gomes-DaSilva, he was found to be in the United States illegally and subject to removal proceedings, so officers made the arrest," DHS said in the statement.
The student is in ICE custody pending removal proceedings, it said.
The pair were seemingly arrested during a one-month law enforcement crackdown in the state on undocumented migrants, the results of which were announced Monday during a press conference held by federal officials who said they detained 1,461 migrants.
Concerning Gomes da Silva's detainment, U.S. Attorney Leah Foley for Massachusetts blamed the state over its alleged sanctuary policies, stating that when local law enforcement declines to work with federal immigration authorities, ICE is forced to go into their streets, and if they find undocumented individuals, they will be arrested.
"He is 18 years old. He's unlawfully in this country. And, unfortunately, we had to go to Milford to look for someone else and we came across him and he was arrested," she said, then shrugged.
"That's where that stands."
Healey has repeatedly said Massachusetts is not a sanctuary state.
In response to a reporter's question about what danger the student posed, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons retorted by asking whether they would be asking the same question if it was state police and not ICE agents that performed the arrest.
"I didn't say he was dangerous, I said he's in this country illegally. We're not going to walk away from anybody," he said.
"There are 18-year-olds arrested, but we are focused on this one. And I will say, his dad hasn't turned himself in yet and his dad knowns he's the target of it."
In a writ of habeas corpus filed Sunday by attorney Miriam Conrad, who is representing Gomes da Silva, she said her client entered the U.S. through a student visa in 2021, which has lapsed but the student is eligible for and intends to apply for asylum.
"Petitioner has no criminal history," the court document states.
"Petitioner is currently being detained by federal agents without cause and in violation of his constitutional rights under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."
The officials said during the press conference that nearly 1,500 undocumented migrants were detained in Operation Patriot, which was launched amid the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration and controversial attempt at mass deportations.
The Trump administration deportations have been met with legal challenges as well as accusations of deporting U.S. citizens, including children.
Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., chastised the Trump administration over its detainment of Gomes da Silva.
"This isn't about public safety. This is about cruelty and power and fear engendered by the Trump administration," he said in a video statement published to X.
"To the Milford community, I'm with you as we tell the Trump administration to keep its hands off your kids."
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
20 minutes ago
Judge blocks private prison operator from housing ICE detainees at shuttered Kansas center
LEAVENWORTH, Kan. -- A judge on Wednesday barred a major U.S. private prison operator from housing immigrants facing possible deportation in a shuttered Kansas City area detention center unless it can get a permit from frustrated city officials. Leavenworth County Judge John Bryant agreed after a packed hearing to grant the city of Leavenworth's request for a temporary restraining order against CoreCivic, one of the nation's largest private prison operators. CoreCivic had claimed in legal filings that halting the opening of the 1,033-bed facility on the northwest outskirts of the Kansas City area would cost it $4.2 million in revenue each month. City officials said they anticipated the arrival of detainees apprehended by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was imminent under a Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigration. Leavenworth isn't the first city where controversy has surrounded the reopening of a private prison as an ICE detention facility. In Newark, New Jersey, Mayor Ras Baraka sued the state's top federal prosecutor on Tuesday over his recent arrest on a trespassing charge at a federal immigration detention facility in that state, saying the Trump-appointed attorney had pursued the case out of political spite. Scott Peterson, the city manager for Leavenworth, said he didn't know if the case in Kansas marked the first time a municipality had prevailed in court. 'I would point out that maybe the reason we have seen some success here today is this is not about immigration,' Peterson said. 'This is not about private prisons. This is about land use.' In late 2021, CoreCivic stopped housing pretrial detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service in the Leavenworth facility after then-President Joe Biden called on the Justice Department to curb the use of private prisons. In the months leading up to the closure, the American Civil Liberties Union and federal public defenders urged the White House to speed up the closure, citing inmate rights violations there along with stabbings, suicides and even one homicide. But with President Donald Trump pushing for mass deportations under a wide-ranging crackdown on illegal immigration, the facility that CoreCivic now calls the Midwest Regional Reception Center is in demand again. It is located just 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of the Kansas City International Airport. As part of his crackdown, Trump has vowed to sharply increase detention beds nationwide from the budgeted 41,000 beds this year. Tennessee-based CoreCivic initially applied for a special use permit from the city in February but then withdrew that application the next month, arguing in court filings that it didn't need the permit and that the process would take too long. 'It became clear to CoreCivic that there was not a cooperative relationship,' said Taylor Concannon Hausmann, an attorney for the private prison operator, speaking in court. The city sued CoreCivic, the lawsuit claiming that CoreCivic impeded the city police force's ability to investigate sexual assaults and other violent crimes. The lawsuit contended that the permitting process was needed to safeguard itself from future problems. 'Just follow our rules," an attorney for the city, Joe Hatley, said in court. 'Go get a permit.' The first version of the lawsuit, filed in March in federal court, was tossed out in May on technical grounds. But Bryant sided with Hatley in the case refiled the same month in state court, finding that the proper procedures weren't followed. Concannon Hausmann, CoreCivic's attorney, declined to comment as the crowd filtered out of the courtroom Wednesday. Norman Mallicoat held a sign reading, 'CoreCivic Doesn't Run Leavenworth' as he left. 'I see this as basically a large company trying to bully a small city into getting what it wants and not having to follow the rules and ordinances of the city,' Mallicoat said.
24 minutes ago
El Salvador deportees are entitled to due process, judge rules
A federal judge is ordering the Trump administration to give the hundreds of men deported to El Salvador in March under the Alien Enemies Act the right to challenge their detentions as unlawful. In a 69-page order issued Wednesday, Judge James Boasberg gave the Trump administration until June 11 to come up with a plan to allow the men currently detained at El Salvador's notorious CECOT mega-prison to practice their due process rights. "In short, the Government must facilitate the Class's ability to seek habeas relief to contest their removal under the Act. Exactly what such facilitation must entail will be determined in future proceedings," Boasberg wrote. "Although the Court is mindful that such a remedy may implicate sensitive diplomatic or national-security concerns within the exclusive province of the Executive Branch, it also has a constitutional duty to provide a remedy that will 'make good the wrong done,'" he wrote. In what could portend the next chapter in a legal battle that has ensnared the Trump administration for nearly three months, Judge Boasberg reached the conclusion that the men -- regardless of their alleged criminal status -- deserve the right to challenge the government's claim. "Defendants plainly deprived these individuals of their right to seek habeas relief before their summary removal from the United States -- a right that need not itself be vindicated through a habeas petition. Perhaps the President lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act. Perhaps, moreover, Defendants are correct that Plaintiffs are gang members," Boasberg wrote. "But -- and this is the critical point -- there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT Plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the Government's say-so," he wrote. The Trump administration touched off a legal battle in March when it invoked the Alien Enemies Act -- an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process -- to deport two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a "hybrid criminal state" that is invading the United States. An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged that "many" of the men deported on March 15 lack criminal records in the United States -- but said that "the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose" and "demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile."
Politico
24 minutes ago
- Politico
Big trouble for the Cuban exception
POWER OUTAGE — Until Friday, Cuban immigrants occupied a special place in American immigration policy. From the Mariel boatlift to 'Wet Foot, Dry Foot' policy to the sheer transformation of Miami as the so-called capital of Latin America, over the past 60 years Cubans have played a key role in rewriting the rules on immigration — sometimes carving out their own exceptions in U.S. immigration law. But a Supreme Court majority last Friday may have dealt a lasting blow to the traditionally privileged status of Cuban immigrants. The Trump administration now has the green light to end the Biden-era Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (CHNV) parole program and eliminate the legal status of over 500,000 immigrants, including Cubans. Never before have so many Cubans been on the verge of losing status — let alone being deported en masse. Cubans, via the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, have long enjoyed their own specific path to citizenship; after living in the United States for a year, Cubans are fast-tracked towards obtaining permanent residency. And Cubans under that law have been exempted from other provisions of the Immigration and Naturalization Act. Politicians have tried (and largely failed) to replicate those special protections for other immigrant groups — most recently for Venezuelans. But none of those groups have achieved the political clout and influence needed to secure the kinds of benefits Cubans have enjoyed for nearly six decades under U.S. law. The Supreme Court's recent decision allowing the Trump administration to cancel the parole program puts in limbo tens of thousands of Cubans who hadn't been in the U.S. long enough to qualify for the Cuban Adjustment Act's protections. That's in addition to the 40,000 Cubans with deportation orders against them. It's not the first time Cubans have seen their unique status in immigration law pared back. In 2017, the Obama administration nixed the Clinton-era 'Wet Foot, Dry Foot' policy which granted Cuban refugees who were intercepted on U.S. soil automatic asylum as part of its efforts to reopen diplomatic relations with Havana. And the first Trump administration opted to enforce a deal with Cuba to accept deportation flights from the U.S., even as it reinstated other sanctions and measures against the island's communist government. But the scale of the potential deportations now is expansive — and tinged in irony. After helping deliver Florida twice to Trump, Cubans have never had more influence in Washington. Cuban exile politicians are at the peak of their power. Marco Rubio, the former senator and son of Cuban immigrants, is one of the most influential American diplomats in recent memory, the first individual since Henry Kissinger to hold the national security adviser and secretary of state positions at the same time. On Capitol Hill, Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.), another Cuban American, is the vice chair of the House Appropriations Committee and wields considerable influence within a narrow GOP House majority over the flow of legislation. That influence has only magnified with House Republicans' slim majority. The 'crazy Cubans' –– as Speaker Mike Johnson has dubbed Díaz-Balart and his South Florida colleagues Reps. María Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gímenez –– have wielded their influence in concert with Rubio's policy priorities. But the Trump administration has been adamant about making good on Trump's vow of the largest mass deportation in U.S. history — with the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pressing Immigrations and Customs Enforcement to ramp up arrests to 3,000 a day and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pushing forward on canceling temporary programs, including CHNV. Deporting the thousands of Cubans suddenly out of status could go a long way toward reaching the numbers Trump promised on the stump. Only there's one big problem: Miami's Cuban voters are overwhelmingly Trump voters. Florida International University's Cuba poll released just after the 2024 election showed a staggering 68 percent of Cuban Americans cast their ballots for Trump, nearly twice as many as in 2016. To cast out Cubans would be political suicide for the GOP and could cost them in the midterms, says Dr. Eduardo Gamarra, a professor and pollster at FIU. 'Now there are more Republicans than there are Democrats in Miami Dade County, it may have reached its apex,' Gamarra said, while cautioning that 'these shifts are not permanent.' In the wake of the Supreme Court decision, the South Florida Cubans in Congress will attempt to thread the needle between breaking with Trump on deportations and defending the Cuban population that delivered them their political power. For their part, they are vowing to fight to preserve Cubans' pathways to citizenship. Diaz-Balart wrote on X shortly after the Supreme Court ruling that they are working with the Trump administration 'to make the case and find a permanent solution for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans who have fled political crises and cannot return to their countries of origin because of legitimate claims of persecution.' More specifically, the South Florida members are holding out hope they'll convince the Trump administration to keep the Cuban exception. 'They need to be treated a little bit differently,' Gímenez told reporters at a press conference in Miami following the court ruling. 'They're a part of our community, they're part of our economy and they need to be treated as such,' Gimenez added. 'So we're going to be looking for some adjustments to what the enforcement mechanism of this ruling is going to be.' Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@ Or contact tonight's authors at abianco@ and ebazail@ or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @_alibianco and @ebazaileimil. What'd I Miss? — House GOP gets megabill's official price tag: $2.4T: Congress' nonpartisan scorekeeper released its full price tag today of the tax and spending package House Republicans passed last month, predicting that the measure would grow the federal deficit by $2.4 trillion over a decade. The Congressional Budget Office's forecast comes days after Elon Musk, freshly departed from serving as head of the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, blasted the measure as 'massive,' 'outrageous' and 'a pork-filled disgusting abomination.' Just before the new numbers were released this morning, Musk and CBO both came up as topics of discussion during the House GOP's weekly closed-door meeting. — Trump calls for scrapping debt limit, in megabill twist: President Donald Trump today said the debt limit should be 'entirely scrapped,' throwing another wrench into negotiations around the GOP's 'big beautiful' bill. Trump's comment on Truth Social comes as Republicans scramble to pass Trump's new round of tax cuts and other policy priorities in a sweeping legislative package that would raise, rather than eliminate, the cap on the federal government's borrowing authority. Republicans are facing a potential August deadline to raise the debt limit before the U.S. starts to default on its financial obligations. — Putin will 'respond' to surprise Ukraine drone strikes, Trump says: President Donald Trump said today he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the recent Ukrainian drone attack that destroyed more than 40 Russian aircrafts and the Russian leader said he will respond to Ukraine's drone strikes. It remains unclear exactly how Russia would respond. In a post to Truth Social, Trump said his phone call with Putin lasted about one hour and 15 minutes. In addition to the most recent Ukrainian attack, Trump said, the two also discussed 'various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides,' as well as Iran and a general understanding that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. The post was later deleted. — Confirmation process begins for Trump's first judicial nominees: The Senate Judiciary Committee is launching the confirmation process for the first judicial nominations of President Donald Trump's second term. The panel this morning opened a hearing for Whitney D. Hermandorfer, Trump's nominee for the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and four other district court judges in Missouri: Maria A. Lanahan, Cristian M. Stevens and Zachary M. Bluestone for the Eastern District, and Joshua M. Divine for the Eastern and Western Districts. It is a continuation of a major priority of Trump's first term: applying a conservative slant across the federal bench. The Senate confirmed hundreds of judges the last time Trump was in office. The Biden administration also confirmed hundreds of judges, leaving relatively few vacancies for Trump to fill upon his return to the White House in January. According to data from the U.S. courts, there are currently about 49 existing vacancies. AROUND THE WORLD HIT BACK — Ontario Premier Doug Ford is urging Canada's prime minister to retaliate against the United States after it doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. But Prime Minister Mark Carney is holding off, arguing he's close to striking a new trade deal with President Donald Trump. Ford and Carney aired their clashing approaches today, as the Ontario premier accused the PM of being bullied by the U.S. 'You're either standing up for Canada and protecting people's jobs, their livelihoods,' Ford told reporters in Toronto today. 'Or you sit back and get steamrolled. That's not what I'm going to do.' Carney declined to comment on Ford's remarks as he left his national caucus meeting. Ford told CNN's 'The Situation Room' earlier today that he 'highly recommended to the prime minister directly that we slap another 25 percent on top of our tariffs, to equal President Trump's tariffs on our steel.' Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that doubled tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to the U.S., from 25 percent to 50 percent. In March, Canada imposed 25 percent reciprocal tariffs on a list of U.S. steel and aluminum products totaling C$15.6 billion. DANGEROUS HISTORY — The city of Cologne in western Germany is undergoing a major evacuation following the discovery of three unexploded bombs from World War II. Authorities on Monday found the munitions — two 1,000 kilogram bombs and one 500 kilogram bomb, all manufactured in the U.S. — in the central district of Deutz, on the eastern bank of the Rhine. Beginning at 8 a.m. today, approximately 20,500 residents were evacuated from their homes and workplaces. The evacuation zone covers the entire historic district, 58 hotels, three Rhine bridges, the town hall, the Deutz railway station — located across the river from the city center — as well as several museums, a hospital and two care homes. Cologne's iconic cathedral lies just outside the danger zone. Germany's national rail operator Deutsche Bahn warned of widespread disruption, with many train services diverted or canceled. Road traffic in and around the city has also been heavily affected. Nightly Number RADAR SWEEP CRAFT CLOSURES — As Joann Fabric and Crafts expects to finish closing its almost 800 stores by the weekend, crafters across the country are mourning the loss of a textile giant. The Atlantic's Andrea Valdez reports that the recent closures mark an ever-widening gap between crafting materials and their makers. While more generalized retailers and Amazon continue to sell craft supplies, Valdez highlights Joann's characteristic affordability, accessibility and the community experience of entering the store to seek out the perfect colors or textures for upcoming projects. Parting Image Marisa Guerra Echeverria contributed to this newsletter. Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.
