The Milford teenager previously detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is disputing the agency’s claim that they provided three meals a day, including “fresh catered sandwiches,” when he was held in detention.
Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, 18, of Milford, was detained for six days at an ICE field office in Burlington after agents arrested him on May 31. Following his release on June 5, he described to reporters the conditions he experienced inside the office’s holding cell, saying that he ate crackers and slept on the floor.
In an interview with MassLive on Monday, Gomes Da Silva pushed back on a recent statement from ICE that accused him of peddling lies. ICE stated that Gomes Da Silva was provided three meals a day, including “fresh catered sandwiches.”
Gomes Da Silva, however, said this wasn’t true and that the only time he was ever given a sandwich was on June 5, the day of his bond hearing in immigration court.
“They put me in this small, little room so I could do the virtual court hearing and they handed me a sandwich,” Gomes Da Silva said. “And when they did, I told them ‘I don’t really like sandwiches, I’m probably not going to eat that.’”
When he suggested to officers that he would bring the sandwich back to his holding cell for someone else, Gomes Da Silva said that he was told he wasn’t allowed to do that.
“They wouldn’t give sandwiches to anyone else,” he said. “No one ever got sandwiches. It was my last day there and I guess they added it to the fridge.”
Gomes Da Silva also pushed back on another claim made by ICE, which stated that he thanked an officer and said, “Everyone is so nice.”
The teenager said that the officers and guards didn’t care about the detainees. He recalled how one guard would open the door of the holding cell with detainees inside before closing it and saying, “sike.”
He said that only one guard at the facility was truly nice to him and would sometimes let him out at night so that he could call his parents.
“It was only him,” Gomes Da Silva said. “He was the only nice guard.”
During the interview, Gomes Da Silva went into detail about his detainment and described what it was like inside a holding cell with other people.
He told MassLive that, aside from him, the youngest person detained was 25 years old and that many of the detainees were parents who just wanted to see their children.
Read more: ‘A lie’: Interview with released Milford teen casts doubt on ICE statements on arrest
He said that he was provided an aluminum sheet for sleep, and when he had to urinate, there was a camera above the toilet.
“The first cell I went in, they had a rule where if you use the bathroom, you had to clean it,” he said. “You had to use toilet paper and clean it all up. But the other ones (cells) I was transported to, there were no rules. You could leave it there, it’s dirty. It was horrible.”
Something that surprised Gomes Da Silva while he was in the field office was how many detainees told him that they wanted to go to prison rather than be in the holding cell any longer.
“In prison, we have an actual bed,” Gomes Da Silva said. “We can call people. We can actually go outside and breathe in fresh air.”
The only time Gomes Da Silva was allowed out of the office was when he was treated for symptoms of a concussion at a hospital. When he returned from the hospital, he was placed into a cell where he was segregated from the rest of the inmates.
“I don’t know if they were annoyed with me or mad at me, but I went crazy in there,” Gomes Da Silva said. “I was like, ‘I need to get out, I need to go talk to people on the other side.’”
Gomes Da Silva would finally step out of the field office on June 5 when a judge ordered that he be granted bond.
“I was really happy,” he said. “I got to see the sun.”
When he arrived back home to Milford, he was embraced with lots of hugs from his father, mother, little brother and sister.
The first food Gomes Da Silva ate when he got back was chicken nuggets and french fries from McDonald’s. He made food for his siblings in the air fryer and watched Lilo and Stitch with his family.
“They were like, ‘I miss you so much, I’m so glad you’re back,’” said Gomes Da Silva. “They hug me, it was less words, more action.”
ICE previously claimed Gomes da Silva was not the target of his arrest. The agency claimed that they were after his father, João Paulo Gomes-Pereira.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that officials were looking for Gomes-Pereira because he had been identified as a “known public safety threat”.
Gomes Da Silva told MassLive that ICE agents never asked about his father when he was arrested, saying that the agents told him that he was under arrest because he was here “illegally.”
“They say they wanted him, but like it’s clearly not true,” Gomes Da Silva said. “They didn’t ask about him like I said, they really just wanted me like they use him as a defense.”
Gomes da Silva’s attorney, Robin Nice, said on June 5 that the teen had come to the U.S. from Brazil on a visitor visa when he was younger than 7. The visitor visa had turned into a student visa, which had lapsed years ago.
