A Community Stands Up Together
In a victory for constitutional rights, due process and community action, Milford, Mass., teenager Marcelo Gomes da Silva was released from ICE detention after spending five days in captivity, first in Burlington in a bedless cell, the Boston Globe reports.
During his bail hearing, more than 100 people gathered outside, including dozens of his teammates on the school’s volleyball team. Gomes spoke to reporters after his release and said he had been kept in handcuffs the entire time he was detained, The Globe reported. He is an 18-year-old junior in high school with no criminal record.
Below describes what happened to Gomes, but centers on the importance of community action in the face of arbitrary ICE arrests across the country and other civil liberties infractions by the Trump Administration.
It appears ICE is now coming for kids.
Gomes, a junior at Milford High School, was driving teammates to a 7:45 a.m. Saturday volleyball practice when he was stopped and arrested by ICE agents in four cars.
On Wednesday, a district court judge blocked ICE from moving him out of state. That decision, The Boston Globe reported, came the day before Gomes would appear in court in an effort by his attorneys to gain his release while challenging the case to deport him.
Ever since Gomes’ arrest, Milford residents have rallied around him. Now 18 years old, Gomes first enrolled in Milford schools when he was 6. He was born in Brazil and entered the country legally on a student visa he has allowed to lapse. Still, he has no criminal record, is a good student, a band member and a well-liked individual in the school community.
On Sunday, after the high school graduation, students in caps and gowns joined more than 1,000 other residents who rallied outside Milford Town Hall calling for Gomes release, The Globe reported. Some chanted “hands off our kids.”
On Monday, students walked out of classes, calling on federal officials to “free Marcelo.”
On Tuesday, the volleyball team, on which he had played for three years dedicated its playoff game against Taunton to him.
On Wednesday, Gomes’ family released a video pleading with ICE for his release.
His immigration attorney, Robin Nice, told The Globe Gomes has been sick with a fever and held in a cell with no beds and about 40 other people.
ICE, for its part, acknowledged two days after his arrest that it was looking for his father and pulled Marcelo over only because he was driving his father’s car. But despite that acknowledgement, the agency has done nothing to rectify the situation, a pattern we’ve seen before.
“I didn’t say he was dangerous, I said he was in this country illegally, and we’re not going to walk away from anybody,” said Todd Lyons, acting ICE director, according to Boston’s NBC News affiliate.
As protests mounted, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey issued a video message on X. “ICE admits Marcelo doesn’t have a criminal background,” she said. “He’s not even a threat. He wasn’t even their target. They admit that, so they need to let him go. Marcelo belongs in school not in a detention center. He belongs with his friends and his teammates. I stand with the Milford community in calling for Marcelo’s release.”
Healey, it appears from her words, drew strength from the community’s willingness to stand up and speak out. Other towns, across Massachusetts and elsewhere, can learn from that. If we want elected officials to speak out strongly and in a coordinated and sustained manner, we, the people, need to compel them to.
When Donald Trump took office, he said his administration would focus on arresting undocumented immigrants who had committed a crime or had been in this country for two years or less. Then his acting ICE director said instead, “we’re not going to walk away from anybody.”
That’s scary, especially when the resources to go after “anybody” could soon balloon.
Here is what Trump mega-advisor Stephen Miller wrote on X, politicalwire.com reports.
“The BBB [Big Beautiful Bill] will increase by orders of magnitude the scope, scale and speed of removing illegal and criminal aliens from the United States. For that reason alone, it’s the most essential piece of legislation currently under consideration in the entire Western World, in generations.”
No, not the most essential piece of legislation, Mr. Miller. The most terrifying.
In Milford, the citizenry stood up. The community is trying. It is rallying collectively and showing its outrage.
Keep this in mind. Silence, whether a result of disinterest or fear, has the same outcome: complicity. That complicity ends when each of us takes the responsibility on ourselves to stand up and speak out.