High School Junior's Arrest Is New ICE Flashpoint

Another arrest by federal immigration officers is drawing controversy, this one involving a high school student near Boston who was stopped on his way to volleyball practice. The details:

• On Saturday, authorities with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 18-year-old Marcelo Gomes Da Silva in Milford. He was born in Brazil but has been in the US since age 6, reports NBC News; he attends Milford High School.
• ICE officials say they were actually looking for Gomes' father, and the teen happened to be driving his car. But the younger Gomes also "is in this country illegally and we're not going to walk away from anybody," said Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, per Reuters.

• "Outrageous," said Miriam Conrad, Gomes' lawyer. "Locking up a high school junior with no criminal record does not make the community safer. It sows fear among immigrants."
• Gomes is now in federal custody, but a federal judge has ordered authorities not to transfer him out of Massachusetts until he considers a lawsuit challenging the detention. The suit says that the teen entered the US on a student visa that has since expired but that he plans to apply for asylum.
• Protesters gathered at Milford Town Hall over the weekend in support of the teen, reports the Boston Globe, and Democratic Gov. Maura Healey said she was "disturbed and angered" over the arrest.
• "When we go out into the community and we find others who are unlawfully here, we are going to arrest them," said Boston's ICE Field Officer Patricia H. Hyde. "We've been completely transparent with that."

(More Immigration and Customs Enforcement stories.)