Milford High student released from ICE detention: ‘Nobody should be in here' (video)

Yahoo

06-06-2025

A Milford student athlete arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement over the weekend said the first thing he wanted to do when he got home after his release Thursday was hug his dog.
Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, who was arrested while driving to volleyball practice on Saturday, was released from an ICE facility in Burlington after a judge ordered he be granted bond. He said during the six days he had spent in custody, he had faced poor conditions, had no access to showers and sometimes had been given only crackers for a meal.
'It's not a good spot to be. Nobody should be in here,' Gomes Da Silva said, speaking to reporters outside of the Burlington facility after his release Thursday afternoon.
The 18-year-old said he had picked up a teammate on the way to volleyball practice Saturday when another car pulled up behind him. At first, he thought it was just a normal car, until the ICE agent turned on their lights and got out.
In custody, Gomes Da Silva said adult men surrounded him and he was uncomfortable using the bathroom in front of others. He slept on concrete floors using a mylar blanket.
Because he speaks English, Portuguese and Spanish, Gomes Da Silva said he translated for many of the other men in the detention facility, who often asked him to read documents that they had been asked to sign before they did so.
'A lot of those papers, I would have to look back at them and be like, 'You're being deported. They're taking you out of the country,'' he said. 'And I would have to watch people cry.'
Gomes Da Silva said that he had come to the United States at 6 years old, and didn't know until his arrest that he was not a legal resident. Now, he worries about his father, who he said had taught him to always put others before himself.
ICE agents were looking for Gomes Da Silva's father on Saturday. Gomes Da Silva was driving his father's car when he was stopped and arrested.
'He's 18 years old. He's unlawfully in this country, and we had to go to Milford to look for someone else, and we came across him, and he was arrested,' acting ICE Boston Office Director Patricia Hyde said during a Monday press conference at the John J. Moakley Courthouse in Boston.
Many of the people Gomes Da Silva met in the Burlington facility had families and children, he said, adding he wanted to be able to help them and others in the same position.
'I told every single inmate down there, when I'm out, if I'm the only one that leaves that place, I've lost,' Gomes Da Silva said. 'I want to do whatever I can to get them as much help as possible.'
U.S. Representative Seth Moulton, D-6th Massachusetts District, said that Gomes Da Silva had 'done more to demonstrate and uphold American values' in the few minutes that he spoke to reporters than the entirety of President Donald Trump's administration.
U.S. Representative Jake Auchincloss, D-4th Massachusetts District, agreed and criticized the federal government's widespread arrests of undocumented immigrants who have no criminal histories.
'This is about dignity and freedom and due process. This administration is not making Americans safer and is not keeping the promises that Trump made on the campaign trail,' Auchincloss said. 'What he is doing is upending law and order. He's making communities feel less safe, and he's not upholding the core American promises.'
After speaking to reporters with Gomes Da Silva, Moulton and Auchincloss went inside the ICE facility to see the conditions for themselves. The two U.S. Marine Corps veterans said it was worse than anything either had personally seen during their military service.
They saw some of the cells in the facility, each of which had about half a dozen people and no windows, Moulton said.
'When we were going on hikes in the Marine Corps, and you'd have a thin mat to sleep on at night ... that's more than they have here,' he said. 'So for anyone like Marcelo, who's actually expected to stay here, to sleep here with no beds, not what anyone else would call a blanket, sparse food, no windows. It's obviously completely inappropriate, I would say inhumane, for long-term detention.'
The Burlington facility is not typically used as a detention center, they explained, but for processing people who have been arrested, so most are only there for less than 24 hours. However, Gomes Da Silva was kept there longer after a judge issued an order to stop him from being moved out of state.
Auchincloss said there were approximately 45 people, both men and women, in the facility during his visit on Thursday, though he added that Gomes Da Silva told him more people had been moved out of the building that morning.
In a statement, Gov. Maura Healey said she was 'relieved' that Gomes Da Silva was returning home.
'This has been such a traumatic time for this community, and I hope that they find some solace in knowing that the rule of law and due process still prevail,' she said. 'Marcelo never should have been arrested or detained, and it certainly did not make us safer.
'It's not okay that students across the state are fearful of going to school or sports practice, and that parents have to question whether their children will come home at the end of the day,' she continued. 'In Massachusetts, we are going to keep speaking out for what's right and supporting one another in our communities.'
Members of the community have staged a number of protests against Gomes Da Silva's detention, including after the Milford High School graduation, the day after his arrest. He said Thursday that he was grateful for the support.
'It showed me that a lot of people understand that it's not as easy as just taking someone, putting them in the detention center and sending them off to their country. There's more than that,' he said. 'There's family, there's love, there's community.'
However, Auchincloss pointed out that not everyone in ICE detention has that support.
'We just don't know how many other kids like Marcelo might be wrapped up in the system and just don't have a community rising up to protest against what's happening,' he said. 'I think there are a lot of people who are just being forgotten.'
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Read the original article on MassLive.