The window of a shop on Main Street in Vineyard Haven looks out on an Island community going about its business. But to a Brazilian immigrant who works there, the view is of a world suddenly filled with uncertainty and peril.
This mother of a 12-year-old daughter scans the streets apprehensively, saying, “What if next time I look on the street, I see immigration agents coming through that door?”
The woman said her husband and their daughter are undocumented and she fears being targeted by immigration agents so we are identifying her only by initials, M.R.. She, like so many of the estimated 4,000 Brazilian immigrants who live year-round on the Island, is consumed with fear, as President Donald Trump has made it clear in his first 10 days in office that his threats of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants are very real.
On a recent afternoon, M.R. had already picked up her 12-year-old daughter from school, but in the hours before her husband returns from his work and as she starts her afternoon shift, she said she was worried about her daughter being home alone. M.R. said she has warned her not to open the door, and to stay quiet in the basement if someone knocks while she and her husband are out at work.
She has also been constantly checking her phone for news, which has been worrisome in the past few days, particularly stories about a charter flight that deported 88 Brazilian immigrants who were sent back home in handcuffs and ankle shackles on Jan. 25.
“My mother called me crying. She was afraid it could happen to me,” said M.R., who is in her early 40s, with straight blonde hair framing brown eyes and a broad smile. “I told her not to worry, that’s the worst that could happen …”
“But I pray every day it won’t,” she adds.
M.R. is constantly following news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids all over the country since the Trump administration started delivering on the promise of mass deportations. Other immigrants on the Island are also concerned, but they’re still bringing their children to and from school every day, and trying to learn to live with the fear.
In the long shadows of a cold afternoon outside the Tisbury School, a line of parents were there to retrieve their children, cars idling in the pickup lane. A father who confirmed that he is an undocumented immigrant, was wearing a “Tisbury Tigers” sweatshirt and there to pick up his daughter. The father, who we are identifying only by his initials D.Z., said that he and other immigrant parents are more vigilant than ever, and that if even one ICE agent actually shows up at the schools, then parents will not bring their children to school anymore.
“The kids who are undocumented are not criminals,” he said, adding that he expects that the Island’s schools will stand up and protect the students from immigration agents.
Richie Smith, Martha’s Vineyard Public Schools superintendent, is reassuring parents like D.Z. that they will be doing everything they can. “During times like this, I understand the anxiety that’s out there; that’s not only the parents of students who are immigrants, [but also] many of our staff,” he said.
“We’re avoiding speculating,” he added.
Smith said that he hasn’t heard people expressing concern or fear about bringing kids to school, at least not yet. But he said the public schools on the Island are preparing in case they need to respond to any attempts by ICE and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents to enter the schools, or try to obtain information about students.
The All-Island School Committee represents six Martha’s Vineyard public schools, where a significant portion of the students are from immigrant families where Brazilian Portuguese is spoken in the home. The schools are updating guidelines on how to deal with immigration enforcement, with the help of an immigration attorney.
“We would base things off state laws, federal laws, and policies,” Smith said, adding that the schools are obligated to respond to arrest warrants from federal or state judges, but not ICE warrants.
Smith said this week he attended a meeting of superintendents with the office of state Attorney General Andrea Campbell, which published new guidance for schools since the Trump administration canceled a policy by President Joe Biden’s administration that considered schools and churches “sensitive locations.” The directive didn’t allow ICE to perform searches or to make arrests in the schools unless there was a special circumstance, or if the agents had prior approval from their superiors. By canceling Biden’s former policy, the Trump administration gives ICE more freedom to enter those places.
That’s putting more pressure on local schools. “Our commitment is making sure that we take care of the welfare of our kids, and strictly protecting their educational and civil rights,” Smith said. “Anybody who shows up to our schools, we will strictly enforce that.”
Martha’s Vineyard Public Schools currently have nearly 400 students on the English language learning program, out of a total of 2,150 students from pre-K to Grade 12
Every day in the school playgrounds, and in the parking lots where parents retrieve their children, you can hear the distinct accent of Brazilian Portuguese from the region of Minas Gerais, from where the vast majority of the Island’s Brazilian families hail. They are a part of the Island, but some are wondering how long they will be able to stay.
A Brazilian woman who was picking up her daughter at the Tisbury School on Tuesday explained that her three children were all born in America, and have so-called “birthright.” After living for two decades in the U.S., the woman, who we are identifying only as K.A., said she and her husband are pondering a return to Brazil. But it makes for very hard choices.
“I don’t want [deportation] to interrupt my children’s dreams of going to university,” she said. “I know it’s not going to be only criminals, because we have already seen it happen to someone who is not a criminal in Marlborough,” she said. “Even people who have been a long time here and lived through the first Trump mandate are afraid. Trump promised to do this, and that’s what he will do; that’s why it will be mass deportation.”
The situation is intense, but this looming threat is not new for the Brazilian immigrants of the Island.
Back in 2017, the School Committee issued a Safe School Resolution during the first Trump administration. The document says that the committee believes the safe and caring learning environment they are in charge to provide “would be threatened by the presence” of ICE and DHS employees or agents “on District property for the purpose of obtaining information about students and families, or for the purpose of removing or detaining students and their families.”
This resolution is based on several state and federal policies that guarantee the privacy of students’ records, among other rights, regardless of immigration status. It also establishes the creation of protocols of action related to immigration enforcement.The committee is updating the protocols since discussions started in late November, and they will be finalized on Feb. 20.
Each of the seven Island schools will have one or two people “very well-versed” on the protocols “should someone show up on our campus like an ICE person or DHS person,” Smith said.
The superintendent said he is not aware of any interactions with immigration agents during the first Trump administration, but the school district is still being proactive in this new administration.
At the Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School, Daniel Soares teaches more than 80 Brazilian students ages 14 to 17 in the Portuguese Language Arts and Portuguese Heritage programs. He is a doctor of education, on a sabbatical from Instituto Federal de Goiás in Brazil. He has worked on the island for three years.
Soares said that many in the Brazilian community are either skeptical that the Trump administration will enforce mass deportation, based on their experience with the first term, or are taking the news calmly. “What I’ve been hearing is ,‘If we get deported, we sell our stuff here, and rebuild our lives there [Brazil].”
He also said that the majority of the Brazilian Christian community on the Island supports President Trump because they identify with his stances on issues such as abortion and gender. “This identification is stronger than the fear of deportation,” he said.
After President Trump spoke about plans of mass deportation, Soares said, he became more aware of his usual role in explaining the Brazilian educational system to his students. In his classes, Soares tells students how important it is to be able to write and read in Portuguese, not only to have the advantages of a bilingual certificate, but also to be able to navigate the Brazilian educational system in case students return to Brazil, especially kids who have been raised since a young age on the Island.
“Part of my job as an educator is to prepare them for life. I do that through literature. One of the texts is the poem that says ‘In the middle of the road there was a stone. There was a stone in the middle of the road,’” he said, citing Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
“I tell them every path has a stone, and there’s no path without it — that’s the reality of life. And literature teaches us that living an unprepared life poses a higher risk.”
Back on Main Street in Tisbury, M.R. ends her shift at the shop, and leaves to go back home to her daughter. Along the way, she is looking out for police stops, and fearful of rumors suggesting ICE agents may be coming to the Island. Her neck hurts with tension, and she is relieved to finally get home to her family. She works hard in the shop, and has even done some jobs in construction, and she shares her belief that the Island’s economy would falter without immigrants working.
“Who is going to serve the super-rich in the summer?” she asks. “We are mostly honest working people. Why spread terror?”