Gov. Maura Healey is requesting an explanation after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials arrested a Massachusetts high school student on Saturday.
“I’m disturbed and outraged by reports that a Milford High School student was arrested by ICE on his way to volleyball practice yesterday,” Healey stated in a statement released Sunday morning. “Yet again, local officials and law enforcement have been left in the dark with no heads up and no answers to their questions.”
The governor is urging ICE to reveal details on why the student was arrested, where he is now, and “how his due process is being protected,” according to her statement.
ICE officials held the 18-year-old student somewhere off the Milford High School campus, according to Milford Public Schools Superintendent Kevin McIntyre in a statement released on Sunday. In recent weeks, federal immigration authorities have arrested several Milford parents, according to the speaker.
“Milford Public Schools has no involvement in immigration enforcement and supports all of our students and families, including those who are immigrants to the United States. “They are community members, students in our classrooms, Milford athletes, musicians, artists, friends, and neighbors,” McIntyre writes.
The student’s name has not been published by officials, but his friends and relatives identified him to WCVB as “Marcello.”
“He is not a criminal. “He’s a member of this community,” his girlfriend, Julianys Rentas, told the news channel in tears.
Rentas said WCVB she is in communication with her lover, who informed her that he is being detained in shackles among dozens of other men. He is the lone teenager among them.
Marcello’s friends and family told the news station that he had resided in Milford since he was six years old.
“To just separate him from everybody he knows — like his whole life, just because he wasn’t born here — it’s not right,” his cousin, Ana Julia Araujo, told WCVB.
Milford Police Chief Rob Tunsio told the television station that the agency learned about the arrest from the school system and is now investigating the issue.