Editor’s note: So what happened after the Brazilian immigrants of Martha’s Vineyard were rounded up by federal agents and ferried off the Island in chains, as part of the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration policies?
With federal officials not releasing details, it is still hard to answer that question for the vast majority of those detained, but The MV Times has stayed on the story, and has managed to piece together three separate narratives for three detainees –– two who have completed what is called “self-deportation,” and one who insists his documentation as a legal resident is in order, and is vowing to fight in court to stay in the U.S.
Here are their stories.
Luan Padilha dos Santos turned 30 behind bars at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility. It was not what this Brazilian immigrant — who was working on the Island to save money to build a house and help his grandparents — had in mind.
Dos Santos, who had been on the Island for more than a year, hoped to celebrate his birthday with his family in Brazil, after signing a deportation letter when he was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a May 27 raid — along with about 40 others taken from the Vineyard and Nantucket. But there he was, reaching this milestone of 30 as an inmate at the county jail in Plymouth, and until his last night in detention last Thursday, he didn’t know whether his deportation would happen soon or in the next several weeks.
He recalled that other immigrants who had been detained had wished him a happy birthday and given him gifts from the jail canteen: Pepsi, peanut butter, and instant noodles. Dos Santos said immigrants had tried to lift each other’s spirits, but that he had reached a “physical and mental limit” that week.
“If I sounded down on the phone, my mom would be on the verge of tears,” he said. “I tried to stay strong, but I had reached a point where it was really hard to hold on to hope.”
Three days after his birthday, he would be taken from his cell at 5 am, without knowing his destination, and be put on a flight to Italy, where he is also a citizen, and which was the last country he was in before entering the U.S. After that, he would finally take a flight home to Brazil.
Nearly three weeks after immigration agents raided the Island, two of the three detained Brazilian immigrants and respected members of the Vineyard community identified by The Times have since returned to Brazil. J.M.J., a 37-year-old biochemist and father of two who was working on the Island for three years, was deported on June 10. He asked to be identified by just his initials. Luan Padilha dos Santos was deported on June 12.
Luciano Dacol, a 48-year-old worker who had lived and worked on the Island for 7 years, is still in the detention facility in Plymouth, and is looking to challenge his deportation to remain in Massachusetts with his wife. Dacol provided a work permit and his Social Security number to ICE agents during the May raid.
The Times didn’t find any criminal arrests or records in Dukes County for the three men. The Times also reached out to Brazilian authorities, who declined to provide any personal information about those arrested.
The deportations last week came while top state and congressional representatives had yet to glean basic information from ICE officials about precisely who had been detained from the Vineyard at the end of May. The agency issued a statement at the time of the arrests that about 40 people from the Islands had been detained.
Early last week, Gov. Maura Healey visited the Island and disclosed that ICE still hadn’t shared information on the arrests, despite repeated calls for transparency. And they follow an increase in ICE detentions across the country, including nearly 1,500 arrested in Massachusetts in May, and with the Trump administration facing pressure to ease ICE activity due to fears that businesses and supply chains could be impacted — fears felt on the Island.
Dacol was in the process of obtaining a green card when he was detained in May, and he plans to fight his case from Brazil. “He said he doesn’t want to stay in jail, because he’s not a criminal,” his future son-in-law, who was visiting the Island on the day of the arrest, told The Times. He also requested anonymity for protection.
Dacol, Dos Santos, and J.M.J. each spent two to three days at the ICE processing facility in Burlington, and each said they experienced harsh and unsanitary conditions. Dos Santos said he counted up to 48 men in the roughly 50-square-foot cell. He said that detainees only had Mylar blankets, and slept on the floor. They also described meager rations of either oats and water or potatoes and chicken. They didn’t have access to a shower, and described the bathroom as not having a door. They also each described the transportation to and from the facility in a small, windowless van, so tight that some called it a “can of sardines.”
“I don’t wish this on anybody,” dos Santos said.
In a statement, ICE officials have pushed back against immigrant claims of unsanitary conditions that have been reported in multiple local and regional news organizations.
“ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously,” an ICE spokesperson said.
After Burlington, the three were taken to the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, the only detention center in Massachusetts that accepts ICE detainees. There, the men said, they were given more frequent and larger meals. They were also allowed to go outside and to call their families.
It was in Plymouth that J.M.J. heard his children’s voices for the first time since his arrest six days earlier. “I didn’t want to speak to them at first. But then I heard when they said ‘Daddy,’ my voice choked,” he said. He then started calling them every night. After that, he would pray with the kids before they went to sleep, as he usually did at home.
J.M.J. was likely detained as a result of ICE targeting someone else on the Island, as has been widely reported across the country. He was arrested around 6:30 am after leaving for work. The officers asked for his documents, and after arresting him, they asked whether he knew one of the immigrants with a criminal background they were looking for, who happened to have rented a place at the house where he lived. J.M.J. said he didn’t know him.
Once detained, J.M.J. said he was offered a chance to return to Brazil if he bought a ticket within the first three days of arriving in Burlington. His wife sent him a ticket on time, but he was transferred to Plymouth and didn’t get the flight. He said that all the while, his anxiety was fueled by uncertainty. He also said he was afraid of being transferred out of Massachusetts.
Then, again, an ICE agent told him to buy a ticket to fly back to Brazil. “I challenged him, but he said that this time I could trust them because he was giving his word.” At this point, J.M.J. had already hired an attorney to help. His wife then changed the ticket date, and sent a backpack with clean clothes, soap, a toothbrush, and toothpaste.
ICE officers brought J.M.J. to the airport in Boston. Before entering the airport, they took the shackles from his hands, feet, and waist; then he embarked on a commercial flight back to Brazil. But it wasn’t until his friends picked him up at dawn in Manaus — a city in north Brazil — that he finally felt free.
“It was not bliss, but it was a relief of liberation. Since I have never gone through a procedure like this, each day in the prison system seemed like a year,” he said.
“Most people they are arresting are family men, hardworking people,” he added. “If they wanted to catch criminals, they shouldn’t do their operations at the time family men are going to work at 6, 6:30 am. They are not looking for criminals, they are looking for numbers,” he said.
After 24 hours between flights and buses, J.M.J. arrived in the town where he had lived for 12 years, in the countryside of Roraima, a remote state in the Brazilian Amazon. During a phone interview from his parents’ home, a rooster was crowing in the background. He and his wife are looking forward to reuniting in Brazil as soon as possible.
Dos Santos’ trip was also long. It was outside of JFK Airport in New York, before getting on a commercial flight to Rome, that his shackles came off. Two more flights and a car drive later, he would reach his hometown of Nova Veneza, a town with a population of 13,000 in Brazil known for its large number of Italian descendants. Only there did he finally feel free and able to rest.
Despite having Italian citizenship, Dos Santos said he chose to immigrate to the U.S. to be closer to his father, who had moved to the U.S. when Dos Santos was 4 years old. For now, he plans to rest and see family and friends.
Dos Santos is frustrated that, like him, many hard workers on the Island were detained and forced through a similar experience.
“I won’t be a hypocrite and say I was 100 percent correct. I had permission to work for three months, and I overstayed. But I think the government should focus on criminals,” he said. “Immigrants who only want to work and are contributing to the economy, they are part of a bigger engine. When you take that cog, you affect the whole engine. Many people are afraid to work now, and this has a ripple effect on many businesses.” Last Sunday, he was finally able to celebrate his birthday with his family, who got together over barbecue and made him a strawberry cake.
“He started calling them [his children] every night.”
In case there are any antisemites who may still insist on comparing enforcement of our immigration laws to Nazi tactics, you’re wrong. These interviews highlight the differences for you. The windowless vans are air conditioned. Oats and water are oatmeal and chicken and potatoes are dinner. Speaking daily on the phone to family, lawyers and at least one newspaper is nice for people in custody.
It will always be true that not liking dinner is not the same as not getting dinner.
I am very glad that these families can be reunited, unlike prisoners of the Third Reich.
We have learned from history that incidences of severe persecution of specific groups of people starts slowly. It starts with a group of people demonizing a different group. . It’s a seemingly innocuous route of just calling them criminals .Then, it evolves into something a bit more sinister– The accusations intensify , the attitudes of some people who are predisposed to racial or ethnic biases harden. They start to view “them” as inferior and a threat to our culture. Radio personalities in Rwanda referred to the Tutsis as cockroaches Hitler referred to Jewish people as parasites and rats. Our current president refers to immigrants as rapist, drug smugglers human traffickers and “animals”.
Some media outlets amplify any crime committed by the “others”– Eventually there is a contagion where a group of people think it is acceptable to incarcerate or even murder people based solely on their ethnicity. We have seen it many times, and we are witnessing the early stages of this foul hatred right here in America– We should never forget the genocidal atrocities that have occured in Germany, Rwanda, Cambodia, Myanmar and other countries. Don’t think it can’t happen here– hate knows no boundaries
Why is our country arresting hardworking people?
When trump was campaigning, he said we need to deport the really bad people.
What makes hardworking people “bad?”
The experiences of specific island neighbors detained by ICE was the whole point here, no? I saw no descriptions of severe persecution. I even highlighted a few differences from these descriptions to actual severe persecution.
Again, I really do feel relief that all families talked about here can be reunited or already have been. There’s nothing worse than torn apart families. Perhaps it’s something one’s own self or one’s own loved ones had to have experienced to be able to feel for it. Exaggeration and TDS are not a moral response to these stories. Empathy is.
Thank you to the MvTimes for having the journalistic honesty to not omit the fact that this young man, who entered our country illegally for economic opportunity, happens to have duel citizenship with Italy, a first world country in a continent that is filled with social programs, socialized medicine and plenty of jobs. For anyone to expect me to have sympathy for a young man who bypassed a 1st world country that he is legally authorized to live and work in, to rather live here in the shadows and then get caught living and working illegally on our island, is a real insult to my intelligence. Maybe he found it too hard to find work in Italy because Europe is overrun with illegal immigrants too; so he instead decided to be an illegal immigrant here by taking advantage of our overly generous tourism visa policy by overstaying what he was allowed to.
I hope that ICE starts arresting and publicizing the J-1 visa holders that overstayed and are working here illegally. Most of them are white, so it should be interesting to see if the press finds that narrative coverage worthy, or will it conflict with the “racist orange fascist man” premise that seems to be the basis of all immigration coverage?
The Madagascar Plan was a massive deportation scheme.
It seems to me that all religious people would reject such schemes.
Comments are closed.