CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The family of an 18-year-old Massachusetts high school student arrested on his way to volleyball practice pleaded with immigration officials to release him Wednesday.
“I love my son. We need Marcelo back home. It’s no family without him,” João Paulo Gomes Pereira said in a video released by his son's attorney. “We love America. Please, bring my son back.”
Marcelo Gomes da Silva, who came to the U.S. from Brazil at age 7, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents Saturday. Authorities have said the agents were looking for the teenager’s father, who owns the car Gomes da Silva was driving at the time and had parked in a friend's driveway.
“Like any local law enforcement officer, if you encounter someone that has a warrant or … he’s here illegally, we will take action on it,” Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told reporters Monday.
Gomes da Silva initially entered the country on a visitor visa and was later issued a student visa that has since lapsed, said his attorney, Robin Nice. She described him as deeply rooted in his community and a dedicated member of both the Milford High School marching band and a band at his church.
“He has glowing letters from his principal, from teachers, from his volleyball coach, from his pastor. He has no criminal record. This kid has never interacted with police until last Saturday, and he entered the U.S. lawfully,” she said in an interview Wednesday. “Even if removal proceedings are the appropriate avenue in his case, which is fine, there's no reason for him to be detained."
A federal judge considering Gomes da Silva’s request to be released while the immigration case proceeds has given the government until June 16 to respond and has ordered that Gomes da Silva not be moved out of Massachusetts without 48 hours’ notice given to the court. The government sought permission Wednesday to move Gomes da Silva to a detention facility in a different New England state, Nice said, a move his lawyers oppose because they fear it would delay an immigration hearing scheduled for Thursday. A judge quickly denied the request.
For now, he is being held in a processing facility that is not designed for detention, Nice said. Forty men are sharing one room, sleeping on the cement floor and sometimes only given crackers to eat, she said. Gomes da Silva told her he felt feverish and that after getting hit hard in the head by a volleyball a week before he was detained, he was now having throbbing headaches and vision problems.
“We're really concerned about him. We really want to get him medical care,” Nice said. “He's holding as well as he can, but he's struggling.”
The assistant U.S. attorney representing the government did not respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday. U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said earlier this week that ICE officers were targeting a “known public safety threat” and that Gomes da Silva’s father “has a habit of reckless driving at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour through residential areas.”
“While ICE officers never intended to apprehend Gomes da Silva, he was found to be in the United States illegally and subject to removal proceedings, so officers made the arrest,” she said in a statement.
The video released Wednesday shows Gomes da Silva's parents and younger siblings in the teen's bedroom. His sister describes watching movies with her brother and enjoying food he cooks for her, including “chicken nuggets in the air fryer.”
“I miss everything about him,” she said.
“When he gets back, I will give him a really big hug,” Gomes da Silva's younger brother says. “But ICE, please get him out. Please.”
The arrest has sparked outrage among Democratic officials, including Gov. Maura Healey, who demanded information about his location and whether he is being afforded due process.
“They need to let him go,” Healey said in a video posted Tuesday on the social platform X. “Marcelo belongs in school, not in a detention center.”
Students at Milford High staged a walkout Monday to protest his detainment. Other supporters wore white and packed the stands of the high school gymnasium Tuesday night, when the volleyball team dedicated a match to their missing teammate.
“This is a really active, involved kid,” Nice, his attorney, said. “He is a credit to our society and it is backwards and crazy that we're putting him through this.”
Students take part in a walkout in support of an 18-year-old volleyball player detained by federal immigration authorities, Monday, June 2, 2024 in Milford, Mass. (WCVB via AP)
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons announces that his agency took nearly 1,500 immigrants into custody in Massachusetts over the month of May during a news conference at the John Joseph Moakley U.S. Courthouse in Boston, Monday, June 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Leah Willingham)
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powellsaid Sunday the Department of Justice has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he's repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project Trump has criticized as excessive.
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Stocks are falling on Wall Street after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony about the Fed’s building renovations.
The S&P 500 fell 0.3% in early trading Monday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 384 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.2%.
Powell characterized the threat of criminal charges as pretexts to undermine the Fed’s independence in setting interest rates, its main tool for fighting inflation. The threat is the latest escalation in President Trump’s feud with the Fed.
▶ Read more about the financial markets
She says she had “a very good conversation” with Trump on Monday morning about topics including “security with respect to our sovereignties.”
Last week, Sheinbaum had said she was seeking a conversation with Trump or U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the U.S. president made comments in an interview that he was ready to confront drug cartels on the ground and repeated the accusation that cartels were running Mexico.
Trump’s offers of using U.S. forces against Mexican cartels took on a new weight after the Trump administration deposed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Sheinbaum was expected to share more about their conversation later Monday.
A leader of the Canadian government is visiting China this week for the first time in nearly a decade, a bid to rebuild his country’s fractured relations with the world’s second-largest economy — and reduce Canada’s dependence on the United States, its neighbor and until recently one of its most supportive and unswerving allies.
The push by Prime Minster Mark Carney, who arrives Wednesday, is part of a major rethink as ties sour with the United States — the world’s No. 1 economy and long the largest trading partner for Canada by far.
Carney aims to double Canada’s non-U.S. exports in the next decade in the face of President Trump’s tariffs and the American leader’s musing that Canada could become “the 51st state.”
▶ Read more about relations between Canada and China
The comment by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson came in response to a question at a regular daily briefing. President Trump has said he would like to make a deal to acquire Greenland, a semiautonomous region of NATO ally Denmark, to prevent Russia or China from taking it over.
Tensions have grown between Washington, Denmark and Greenland this month as Trump and his administration push the issue and the White House considers a range of options, including military force, to acquire the vast Arctic island.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has warned that an American takeover of Greenland would mark the end of NATO.
▶ Read more about the U.S. and Greenland
Trump said Sunday that he is “inclined” to keep ExxonMobil out of Venezuela after its top executive was skeptical about oil investment efforts in the country after the toppling of former President Nicolás Maduro.
“I didn’t like Exxon’s response,” Trump said to reporters on Air Force One as he departed West Palm Beach, Florida. “They’re playing too cute.”
During a meeting Friday with oil executives, Trump tried to assuage the concerns of the companies and said they would be dealing directly with the U.S., rather than the Venezuelan government.
Some, however, weren’t convinced.
“If we look at the commercial constructs and frameworks in place today in Venezuela, today it’s uninvestable,” said Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil, the largest U.S. oil company.
An ExxonMobil spokesperson did not immediately respond Sunday to a request for comment.
▶ Read more about Trump’s comments on ExxonMobil
Trump’s motorcade took a different route than usual to the airport as he was departing Florida on Sunday due to a “suspicious object,” according to the White House.
The object, which the White House did not describe, was discovered during security sweeps in advance of Trump’s arrival at Palm Beach International Airport.
“A further investigation was warranted and the presidential motorcade route was adjusted accordingly,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Sunday.
The president, when asked about the package by reporters, said, “I know nothing about it.”
Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesman for U.S. Secret Service, said the secondary route was taken just as a precaution and that “that is standard protocol.”
▶ Read more about the “suspicious object”
Trump said Iran wants to negotiate with Washington after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown on protesters, a move coming as activists said Monday the death toll in the nationwide demonstrations rose to at least 544.
Iran had no direct reaction to Trump’s comments, which came after the foreign minister of Oman — long an interlocutor between Washington and Tehran — traveled to Iran this weekend. It also remains unclear just what Iran could promise, particularly as Trump has set strict demands over its nuclear program and its ballistic missile arsenal, which Tehran insists is crucial for its national defense.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking to foreign diplomats in Tehran, insisted “the situation has come under total control” in fiery remarks that blamed Israel and the U.S. for the violence, without offering evidence.
▶ Read more about the possible negotiations and follow live updates
Fed Chair Powell said Sunday the DOJ has served the central bank with subpoenas and threatened it with a criminal indictment over his testimony this summer about the Fed’s building renovations.
The move represents an unprecedented escalation in Trump’s battle with the Fed, an independent agency he has repeatedly attacked for not cutting its key interest rate as sharply as he prefers. The renewed fight will likely rattle financial markets Monday and could over time escalate borrowing costs for mortgages and other loans.
The subpoenas relate to Powell’s testimony before the Senate Banking Committee in June, the Fed chair said, regarding the Fed’s $2.5 billion renovation of two office buildings, a project that Trump has criticized as excessive.
Powell on Sunday cast off what has up to this point been a restrained approach to Trump’s criticisms and personal insults, which he has mostly ignored. Instead, Powell issued a video statement in which he bluntly characterized the threat of criminal charges as simple “pretexts” to undermine the Fed’s independence when it comes to setting interest rates.
▶ Read more about the subpoenas
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters while in flight on Air Force One to Joint Base Andrews, Md., Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
President Donald Trump waves after arriving on Air Force One from Florida, Sunday, Jan. 11, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
