Editors note: This story has been updated to correct information about Milford High’s volleyball game.
A Milford High School student who has been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) since last weekend was recently moved from a field office holding cell into solitary confinement, his lawyers told MassLive Wednesday night.
Attorney Miriam Conrad said in an interview that when she asked one of the guards at ICE’s Burlington, Massachusetts, field office why her client — 18-year-old Marcelo Gomes Da Silva — was no longer being held in a cell along with 25 to 30 other detainees, he said that the guards thought “he’d be more comfortable” in a separate holding space.
Conrad expressed skepticism about the guard’s assessment, saying that her client “needs people to talk to.” But she and another member of the teen’s legal team — Attorney Robin Nice — also described the holding cell he was previously being kept in as lacking privacy and a comfortable place to sleep.
Gomes Da Silva, a Brazilian citizen who migrated to the U.S. when he was a young boy, has not been accused of a crime beyond being in the country illegally. ICE agents intended to target teen’s father —João Paulo Gomes-Pereira — when they pulled over Gomes-Pereira’s car on May 31, but instead arrested Gomes Da Silva after discovering that he was using the car to drive his volleyball teammates around, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said Monday.
“This is just absolutely senseless, heartless and heartbreaking.” Conrad said Wednesday. “It serves no purpose to take a kid like this off the street who has not ever committed a crime in his life….who is loved by his community, by his school, by his church and put him into these horrendous, inhumane conditions and try to take him out of the country.”
Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security immediately responded to requests for comment Wednesday night.
Conditions at the ICE field office
Prior to being moved to solitary confinement, Gomes Da Silva was being kept in a holding cell with a single toilet that provided no privacy for the dozens of people being held there, his lawyers said.
Detainees were also provided nothing to sleep on aside from the cell’s concrete floor, and food offerings at the field office have been so “meager and verging on the point of inedible” that the opportunity to eat a Snickers bar became “a high point” for the teen amidst his ongoing detainment, Conrad said.
Gomes Da Silva told his lawyers that some guards at the field office have been nice, while others have been less friendly. The teen recounted one incident during which a guard pretended to open the door to the holding cell as if he was about to free the detainees, only to quickly close it while saying “sike,” prompting laughs from the other guards, Conrad said.
“If he is lucky,” Gomes Da Silva is allowed one two-minute phone call with his family a day, his lawyers said. During their conversation with him Wednesday night, he said he misses his family.
Earlier that day, Gomes Da Silva’s family released a video pleading with ICE to set their loved one free. “I need my son inside my home. I need to hug my son — please,“ his father said in the video.
A chance at release
Gomes Da Silva is set to appear in Chelmsford Immigration Court on Thursday at 1 p.m. His lawyers hope the judge will allow him to be released on bail.
Gomes Da Silva sounded demoralized during a Tuesday phone call with Nice, she said. But his spirits seemed brighter when Nice and Conrad met with him Wednesday night.
“He is very much looking forward to having the hearing tomorrow,” Conrad said. “I think he can see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Earlier this week, ICE tried to have Gomes Da Silva transferred to a detention facility in Rhode Island, but the move was blocked by a federal judge.
Outrage at the teen’s arrest and detainment has poured out of the Milford community over the last few days.
On Sunday, protesters gathered downtown to call for Gomes Da Silva’s immediate release. Two days later, at Milford’s volleyball game, attendees wore shirts with the phrase “Free Marcelo.”
