“The child has been sleeping on a cement floor for five days and cannot shower. He brushes his teeth twice,” said the immigration lawyer for Marcelo Gomez da Silva.
Newark mayor Las Baraka has arrested and sued at an ice facility.
Newark Mayor Las Baraka has announced he is suing two federal employees who allegedly ordered arrests at an ice facility in New Jersey.
- The isolation that Da Silva endured subsequently made him “desperately lonely” so he slammed the wall on his phone and someone let him talk, his lawyer told USA Today.
Milford, MA – Sleeping on the cement floor in a windowless room. You only brush your teeth twice in five days and don’t shower. I’m being laughed at by the security guards.
According to his lawyer, Robin Neese, these are one of the “terrifying conditions” that Massachusetts high school junior Marcelo Gomez da Silva has endured immigration and customs enforcement.
Gomez da Silva, 18, was arrested by an ice agent on May 31 when he was stopped on his way to volleyball practice with a friend in his hometown of Milford. Federal officials targeted Da Silva’s father, Joa Paulo Gomez Pereira, who said he was an undocumented immigrant from Brazil, but they detained Gomez da Silva, who came to America at the age of seven with his parents – whom he found himself inflated with his visa.
According to Nice, Gomez da Silva was later detained five nights in a cell intended to hold detainees for hours before being transferred. The cell does not have access to basic amenities such as beds and showers.
“The Burlington (Massachusetts) facility is not a detention center, it is a retention cell,” Nice Today told USA Today during a June 5 hearing in the Gomes Da Silva incident.
“That’s sad,” she added.
Nice first raised the question at a federal immigration court hearing whether he would be released on bail.
“He’s been held in terrible conditions. He shouldn’t be exposed to anyone. Sleeping on a cement floor for several hours a night,” Nice began before she was cut off by immigration judge Jenny Beverly.
Shackle, teasing, lonely confinement
Nice provided details about the client’s confinement at a press conference following the hearing. The judge set up a $2,000 bond for the release of Gomes Da Silva, and provided in a subsequent interview with USA Today.
“The child has been sleeping on a cement floor for five days, unable to shower, brushing his teeth twice. He shares a room with two men,” he told a news conference outside Chelmsford, Massachusetts.
At one point, Gomez da Silva was taken to the hospital emergency room after suffering from serious headaches and vision loss caused by a high school volleyball injury a few days ago. When he came in and out of the hospital, he was handcuffed, maintained his leg bondage, then moved to another room, Nice said.
“He went back to the holding facility at 4am and was put in what I call solitary confinement. It’s a room with no other anyone else, and all of these rooms people have no windows,” Nice said. “There’s no garden time, because it’s not set for that.”
“If you are detained at a Burlington Ice facility, you won’t be able to see the day,” she said. “I don’t know what time it is.”
The isolation that Da Silva endured subsequently made him very “desperately lonely” and he slammed the wall on his phone and decided that someone could talk to him, Nice told USA Today. The guard, who said he had almost ignored him, called him a “knocker” in response.
When Gomez da Silva was held in the room with a larger group, one of the guards made a cruel and practical joke to the detainees, Nice said:
“When ice opens the door, it means someone comes in or someone is freed, so when you open the door, everyone is energized. So he looks at it with a small slit in the door window and one ice officer moves another ice and says, ‘Look at this.’ And then he closed the door.
The isolation of the ice-retaining facility was spreading beyond the wall, Nice said. There was no way she could call her clients there, and he could only make calls for two minutes a day, even on a daily basis.
Nice was unable to see Gomez da Silva until the fifth day of his confinement. He was so closed from the outside world that he didn’t know that his volleyball team had lost in the semi-finals of the state tournament.
ICE did not respond to a request for comment on USA’s Nice claim today.
In a June 2nd statement, Patricia Hyde, field director of Boston’s ice enforcement and removal operations, defended Gomez da Silva’s detention and said the agency intends to pursue deportation procedures.
“If we go to the community and find other people here illegally, we’re going to arrest them,” Hyde said. “He’s 18 years old and he’s illegal in this country. We had to go to Milford looking for someone else. If we encounter someone else here illegally, we arrest them.”
“No one deserves to be there.”
Later on June 5, Gomes Da Silva himself addressed reporters after being released after posting $2,000 in bonds.
“No one deserves to be there,” Da Silva told reporters. “I’m sleeping on a concrete floor. The bathroom – I need to use an open bathroom with a 35 year old man. It’s humiliating. ”
Gomez da Silva also said they were given only crackers for lunch and dinner. Nice said she was fed what was described as an undefined “mash” that was “not like oatmeal, but not oatmeal.”
Gomez da Silva, a church attendee twice a week, asked the guard for the Bible, but it was not offered.
He was a US representative. Seth Moulton and Jake Ouchinkoross, Massachusetts Democrats, returned from Washington, D.C. on Thursday to speak with Da Silva and said they would be inspecting the detention center.
The consequences of immigration crackdown
The Trump administration has sought to intensify the deportation of undocumented immigrants, including people like Da Silva, who have no criminal history, brought here as children. ICE reported 46,269 people were in custody in mid-March, significantly outperforming the 41,500-bed agency’s detention capacity.
USA Today has previously reported allegations of terms in ice detention, similar to those described by Gomes Da Silva and Nice.
In March, four women at Miami’s Chrome North Processor Center said they were chained by prison buses for hours without access to food, water and toilets. They also claimed that the guards were told to urinate on the floor, sleeping on the concrete floor and had only one three-minute shower for three or four days in detention.
The allegations came after two men were taken into custody on January 23 and February 20th in Chrome.
Contributions: Caitlin Kelleher, USA Today Network, Lauren Villagran, USA Today.
