Gov. Healey demands answers after ICE arrests Milford high school student
Gov. Maura Healey is demanding answers and hundreds of locals are protesting after federal agents arrested a Milford High School student on his way to volleyball practice over the weekend.
The governor said in a statement Sunday that she is “disturbed and outraged” by reports that an 18-year-old student was taken into custody by ICE agents on Saturday without so much as a warning or subsequent explanation provided to state officials.
“Yet again, local officials and law enforcement have been left in the dark with no heads up and no answers to their questions,” she said.
Healey said she wants answers immediately on why the student was taken into immigration enforcement’s custody and whether or not his rights have been observed since his arrest.
“I’m demanding that ICE provide immediate information about why he was arrested, where he is and how his due process is being protected. My heart goes out to the Milford community on what was supposed to be a celebratory graduation day,” she said.
The arrested student has been identified by protestors as Marcelo Gomes, a high school junior who was apparently brought to the U.S. as very young child but has spent the balance of his life as a student in the Milford School District.
Parents and local activists organized a protest outside of Milford Town Hall that began at noon on Sunday, where hundreds gathered to demand that federal authorities free Gomes and stop harassing members of their community.
Milford High School’s graduation was scheduled for 10 a.m. that morning and students left the graduation ceremony and marched to join their elders at town hall. Many of the students were still wearing their caps and gowns. Gomes, who is also member of the school’s band, was due to perform at the weekend ceremony.
The protest was peaceful, but emotional, and included chants of “free Marcelo” and “hands off our kids.” Protesters held signs that read things like “silence is complicity,” “we protest so we don’t have to hide people in our attics,” and “education, not deportation.”
U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss, a Democrat who represents Milford in Congress, joined protestors and took to social media after to note that Gomes is “enrolled in honors classes, a coaching assistant for girls volleyball [and] player for boys volleyball, and a member of the school band” — hardly an example of the sort of “worst of the worst” criminal immigrants ostensibly sought by the Trump Administration.
“This administration has its public safety priorities backwards. It pardons cop-beaters from Jan 6 but detains high-school volleyball players. It makes gun-purchaser background checks harder while pushing for tax breaks to buy silencers for pistols. This reckless behavior does not make the residents of Milford safer, and I stand with the community in support of law [and] order,” he wrote.
ICE officials did not respond to a Herald request for comment.
Milford School District Superintended Kevin McIntyre said that the detention of Gomes is not the first such apprehension to strike the southern Massachusetts community, and that several district parents have also been arrested by ICE in recent weeks.
“We are all distraught by this news,” he said in a statement.
According to McIntyre, the district does not and cannot take any role in immigration enforcement but they nevertheless do what they can to “support all of our students and families, including those who are immigrants to the United States.”
“They are members of the community, students in our classrooms, athletes that compete representing Milford, musicians, artists, friends, and neighbors. We will do everything in our power to support our students and families during these difficult times,” he said in his statement.
Healey said the federal government’s crackdown on immigrants in Massachusetts is not helping, it’s just making people afraid.
“The Trump Administration continues to create fear in our communities, and it’s making us all less safe,” she said.
The arrest of Gomes comes as the Trump administration attempts to carry out the president’s campaign promise of mass deportations. The administration’s “border czar” Tom Homan has promised to bring “hell” to Massachusetts in pursuit of Trump’s strict policies.
ICE arrested hundreds of immigrants found across the state in March, claiming most had criminal records but providing no evidence that was the case. The agency is in the middle of a “second surge” of enforcement across the Bay State, which it says is targeting criminal immigrants.
U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley has scheduled a roundtable and press conference for Monday to allow immigration advocates, local community leaders, and impacted families to tell the federal government to keep their “hands off our immigrant neighbors.”
By: Matthew Medsger
Source: Boston Herald