Students and staff at a Massachusetts high school staged a post-graduation protest after U.S. immigration authorities detained a pupil who was scheduled to perform with the school’s band during the ceremony.
Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, 18, was set to play drums at his girlfriend’s high school graduation on Sunday, but was absent from proceedings after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Boston area the previous morning.
Dressed in graduation gowns, hundreds of students, alongside their teachers, families and community members, marched from their school to Milford Town Hall, demanding the return of their classmate and friend.
During the protest, still draped in her red gown, Gomes Da Silva’s girlfriend, Julianys Rentas Figueroa, told NBC News that she’d spoken to her boyfriend on the phone on Saturday shortly after he was detained. He told her that immigration authorities chained his ankles and wrists.
“I haven’t spoken to him since then. I don’t know how he’s doing,” she said.
“I don’t understand why Marcelo was targeted. He’s been in Milford all his life,” she added.
According to the news outlet, Gomes Da Silva was driving his father’s car to volleyball practice with some of his teammates when he was pulled over by immigration authorities.
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Officers conducted the traffic stop because they were looking for Gomes Da Silva’s father, who, according to Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, is residing illegally in the U.S.
During the stop, authorities determined that Gomes Da Silva was also unlawfully in the country and detained him, Lyons said at a press conference on Monday.
According to his friends, Gomes Da Silva was born in Brazil but has attended Milford Public Schools in the Boston area since the age of six, NBC reported.
During the news conference, Patricia H. Hyde, Boston’s ICE field officer, said that despite the high school student not being the target of the investigation, “when we go out into the community and we find others who are unlawfully here, we are going to arrest them. We’ve been completely transparent with that.”
The teen’s arrest coincided with the final day of a far-reaching, month-long illegal immigration clamp down in Massachusetts, coined Operation Patriot, that saw nearly 1,500 people deemed “criminal aliens” detained.
“Make no mistake: Every person that we arrested was breaking our immigration laws, but most of these individuals had significant criminality. They are criminal offenders who victimized innocent people and traumatized entire communities — murderers, rapists, drug traffickers, child sex predators and members of violent transnational criminal gangs,” Hyde said in a statement at the conclusion of Operation Patriot.
Gomes Da Silva’s volleyball coach, Andrew Mainini, told NBC10 Boston on Sunday that his athlete was an “exceptional citizen” who “makes other people smile.”
He said he received word of the arrest from a student who witnessed it around 8:30 a.m. on Saturday. According to Mainini, ICE released two other students in the car because they were under 18.
“I was sitting there thinking, ‘This can’t be happening,'” the volleyball coach added.
“It’s one thing to see things happening in the world. It’s another to have them directly impact the people you work with and care for on a daily basis.”
Gomes Da Silva is not the only member of the community to be arrested by ICE in recent times.
According to Kevin McIntyre, Supt. of Milford Public Schools, several parents have been detained in the past month.
“We are all distraught by this news,” McIntyre said, before telling NBC10 Boston on Sunday that the school district did not have a hand in facilitating the arrests.
“They are members of the community, students in our classrooms, athletes that compete representing Milford, musicians, artists, friends and neighbours,” McIntyre continued.
“We will do everything in our power to support our students and families during these difficult times.”
Rentas Figueroa said Gomes Da Silva was transported between two Massachusetts detention facilities over the weekend.
In a statement on X on Sunday, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said she was “demanding immediate answers” from ICE following the arrest of the high school student.
“The Trump Administration continues to create fear in our communities, and it’s making us all less safe,” she wrote.
During Sunday’s protest, a friend of Gomes Da Silva’s told NBC Boston, “I am disgusted that I have to deal with this on graduation and see one of my greatest friends be taken away for no reason.”
“I just pray that we can make a difference because this is so depressing,” the girl said in tears.
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