Milford, Massachusetts

After mass protests, immigration authorities released Marcelo Gomes Da Silva, an 18-year-old high school junior kidnapped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on May 31. 

Born in Brazil, Gomes Da Silva has lived in the U.S since he was seven years old. ICE agents kidnapped him as he was driving to volleyball practice and took him to a detention center in Burlington, Massachusetts. Gomes Da Silva said: “He [the agent] said, ‘[it’s] because you’re illegal, you’re an immigrant.’ He gave no reason he stopped me, no reason for a traffic stop.” (wgbh.org, June 5)

While imprisoned, Gomes Da Silva slept on the cement floor of a cell he shared with 40 other men. “This place, it’s not good,” he said. “Ever since I got here, they had me in handcuffs. … I haven’t showered in six days. I haven’t done anything. … Nobody should be in here.” (wcvb.com, June 5) 

Gomes Da Silva is one of the over 100,000 foreign-born and undocumented U.S. residents, students and migrants arrested by ICE as part of the Trump administration’s systematic attack on immigrant, working-class communities. 

“They’re all workers,” Gomes Da Silva said of the other detainees he met. “They all got caught going to work. These people have families, man. They have kids to go home to.” Marcelo’s full statement upon his release is at youtube.com.

Yet just as the ICE repression intensifies, so too does anti-fascist resistance — as the response to Gomes Da Silva’s detention shows. Hundreds of students walked out of Milford High School in protest. Many wore T-shirts and held signs that read: “Free Marcelo.” 200 teachers took part in the walkout. In a statement the Massachusetts Teachers Association condemned Gomes Da Silva’s detention as an example of “deliberate acts, designed to intimidate and to further stoke fear and division across our communities. … We are inspired by the brave young people who walked out in protest.” (massteacher.org, June 2) 

Following the Milford High School graduation, which Gomes Da Silva missed while in detention, demonstrators rallied outside Milford Town Hall to demand his release. The protests forced Massachusetts politicians, including Senator Ed Markey and Governor Maura Healey, to call for Gomes Da Silva’s release. 

In defending him, however, Massachusetts Democrats like reactionary Congressmen Jake Auchincloss and Seth Moulton have tried to distinguish between the Trump administration’s crackdown and the supposedly “sensible” anti-immigrant policies they champion. No such distinction exists. By terrorizing people like Gomes Da Silva, Trump is taking to logical extremes the programs of border militarization and mass deportation that the Democratic Clinton, Obama and Biden Administrations all helped develop. 

Bipartisan xenophobia and racism

The racist immigration and border regime is a bipartisan project, designed to enforce racism, divide working-class people and maintain the super exploitation that sustains capital. The MAGA fascists who now control this regime and have abandoned liberal pretenses of legality and due process have made its true function explicit. 

As the protests in solidarity with Gomes Da Silva gathered momentum, a federal court order issued on June 1 prevented ICE from moving him out of Massachusetts. On June 5 a judge ordered his release on a $2,000 bond. Supporters who were gathered outside the Lowell Immigration Court in Chelmsford where the hearing was taking place cheered the news. 

Gomes Da Silva’s lawyer, Robin Nice, has filed a plea for asylum — a process which could take years. With his case pending, Gomes Da Silva still remains at risk of deportation. 

 The protests in solidarity with Gomes Da Silva are the latest example of the nationwide community protests that have mobilized to defend immigrants from Trump’s ICE crackdown. This week over 200 demonstrators turned out in Minneapolis to chase ICE squads off the streets. Other recent protests have checked ICE roundups in San Diego, Chicago and, most recently, Los Angeles, where thousands of demonstrators braved teargas and flashbang grenades to surround an ICE complex downtown. People are fighting with ICE and LA cops; Trump has sent in the National Guard to quell the rebellion.

The defeat of the overt fascism Trump has unleashed can only come through this kind of unequivocal solidarity which rejects the racist settler “nativism” espoused by the MAGA movement. Protests from Milford to LA show the power of working-class solidarity — and its potential to destroy fascism once and for all.