U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has doubled down on its decision to detain 18-year-old Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, an illegal alien and student at Milford High School in Massachusetts, while en route to his volleyball practice.
Despite protests from Democrat Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey and other leftists demanding his release, ICE stood firm, defending the arrest as lawful and appropriate under current immigration enforcement priorities.
“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,” said acting ICE Boston Office Director Patricia Hyde, who was joined by Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons.
Lyons minced no words during a Monday press conference in Boston, stating, “He’s in this country illegally, and we’re not going to walk away from anybody.”
Lyons clarified that the teen was not the primary target of the operation, which was aimed at locating his father, who remains at large.
However, when agents encountered Gomes, who has been in the U.S. unlawfully since his student visa expired, they took decisive action.
“We’re doing the job ICE should have been doing all along,” Lyons added.
BREAKING: ICE arrested an 18-year-old illegal in Massachusetts on Saturday as a collateral arrest for deportation.
Marcelo Gomes da Silva is from Brazil in the US illegally.
His classmates on Monday protested his arrest. They can protest all they want.
He’s getting… pic.twitter.com/exfjDyAUuG
— WatcherAnon (@WatcherQAnon) June 3, 2025
The arrest comes as part of ICE’s “Operation Patriot,” a month-long crackdown that has led to nearly 1,500 detentions of illegal immigrants across the country. While the left cries foul, conservatives applaud the agency’s renewed commitment to upholding the rule of law.
More from MassLive:
During a press conference at the federal courthouse in Boston announcing a May operation in Massachusetts where nearly 1,500 immigrants were taken into custody, Lyons said his agents wear masks because they and their families have been doxxed and “targeted” with death threats.
“So, I’m sorry if people are offended by them wearing masks, but I’m not going to let my officers and agents go out there and put their lives on the line, their family on the line because people don’t like what immigration enforcement is,” he said.
Immigration enforcement’s May operation in Massachusetts detained 1,461 immigrants living in Boston, Worcester, Springfield, Lowell, Lawrence, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and several other communities. ICE said 790 of those immigrants had criminal histories, including the crime of reentering the U.S. after deportation, and that 277 of those individuals have been ordered to be removed from the country by a federal immigration judge.
Lyons, who is from Boston, said operations like this one wouldn’t be necessary if “sanctuary cities would change their policy.” There’s no legal definition for sanctuary city policies, but they generally limit cooperation by local law enforcement with federal immigration officers. Courts have repeatedly upheld the legality of sanctuary laws.
“If sanctuary cities would change their policies and turn these violent criminal aliens over to us into our custody, instead of releasing them into the public, we would not have to go out to the communities and do this,” he said. “Boston is my hometown. And it really shocks me that officials all over Massachusetts would rather release sex offenders, fentanyl dealers. drug dealers, human traffickers, child rapists back into the neighborhoods.”
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