Taken from Menemsha

After a father and son were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) early this week, a network of Islanders are scrambling to keep them from being sent out of the state to Texas. 

Rogerio da Silva Lima and his son, Nycolas de Al Varenga Lima, 15, were taken into ICE custody in Woods Hole on Monday morning. According to the Vineyard chapter of LUCE Immigrant Justice Network, the father and son were “picked up by the [U.S.] Coast Guard off of a fishing boat in Menemsha,” and handed over to ICE. This detention comes nearly a year after ICE came to the Island for the first time.

A friend of the father and son, who asked to remain anonymous for safety reasons, said the trio had gone out recreational fishing around 5 am on Monday, but were stopped by the Coast Guard within two hours of being out in the water. After being told they were free to go, the Coast Guard came back around 30 minutes later to check on their fishing license. According to the friend, the Coast Guard came back a third time to ask for da Silva Lima’s ID, to which he showed a passport, before taking both him and his son to Woods Hole. 

The grassroots organization stated in an Instagram post that the pair were taken to the agency’s facility in Burlington, which is where the ICE’s Boston Field Office is located. ICE’s online detainee database doesn’t list whether the father and son are currently held at the Boston Field Office, but The Times has reported in the past that many detainees were held there. The database said to call the agency for details. An ICE representative was not immediately available for comment. 

Da Silva Lima and his son, who is a Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School student, are originally from Brazil. ICE planned to take the father-son pair to Texas, according to court records, but a team of Islanders helped to file a habeas corpus petition, which is used to challenge alleged unlawful detentions, in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts on Monday. U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns accepted the petition, and the father and son are now represented by Amelia Lynn Ritenour of Haven Immigration Law, LLC, of Maine. 

While the cases progress, the petition keeps the two in Massachusetts while a federal judge reviews each case. Ritenour declined to comment because the case is ongoing. Vincent Engingro III, an attorney with the defensive litigation unit of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts representing ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, was not immediately available for comment. 

According to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, da Silva Lima and his son entered the U.S. illegally in 2021, and an immigration judge from the U.S. Department of Justice ordered their removal in 2023. 

Some Islanders, who were in Menemsha at the scene Monday, said they didn’t realize the arrests were related to ICE at the moment. John Keene, president of the Martha’s Vineyard Fishermen’s Preservation Trust, said he saw a gray-white fishing boat escorted by a Coast Guard vessel. Ryan Rossi, Chilmark harbormaster, said the operator of the Coast Guard boat informed him that the maritime security branch conducted a “law enforcement boarding on a vessel” that needed to be brought into Menemsha for the task to be completed. 

“I provided them with temporary docking options,” Rossi said. “However, I did not receive any details about the vessel, the number of individuals on board, or any law enforcement action taken.” 

Coast Guard spokesperson Alex Gray told The Times that Coast Guard watchstanders had received a report of a “vessel possibly in distress south of Martha’s Vineyard on Monday morning.” 

“Coast Guard Station Menemsha personnel conducted a boarding of a recreational vessel at approximately 10 am, and identified individuals requiring additional immigration status verification,” Gray said. “Sector Southeast New England co-ordinated with ICE to confirm the individuals’ legal status. One passenger on the vessel was found to be a Brazilian national.” Gray said after the Coast Guard learned that da Silva Lima was traveling with a minor, his son, they “worked with ICE to ensure the family remained together during the transfer process.” The friend, meanwhile, said the Coast Guard had denied da Silva Lima’s request to allow his son to remain on the Island. 

The case has caught the attention of lawmakers. Cape and Islands State Sen. Julian Cyr, a Provincetown Democrat, said he was “outraged and deeply troubled that a father and teenage son were arbitrarily detained by the U.S. Coast Guard after a routine safety check off the Martha’s Vineyard coast and transferred to ICE custody.” 

“The Coast Guard’s primary mission is to protect people on our waters — this action violates that core mission, and appears to be yet another example of the capricious and racially charged immigration practices carried out by federal agencies with no role in immigration enforcement,” Cyr said. 

According to a member of LUCE, a volunteer network that supports immigrants and keeps tabs on ICE, Islanders sprang into action after a call about the situation came into the network’s hotline. Members of the Chappaquiddick Wampanoag Tribe coordinated efforts to connect those who wanted to help, and LUCE set up a GoFundMe for legal fees, which as of Wednesday had raised more than $9,000, and the public school system provided support. They also received help from Andrea James, criminal justice reform advocate and a part-time Oak Bluffs resident making an independent campaign to become Massachusetts’ governor. She is helping fund the habeas corpus process. James underscored she was helping as a citizen, outside of her campaign. 

James said the “unjustifiable situation … required quick mobilization” by the community. She said she personally knows da Silva Lima, who she described as a hard-working man, and his son, who she said should be back in school. 

“My heart sank to think of his son, who is the kindest kid on the planet, who was abducted,” she said. 

She also highlighted the “terrible” conditions of the Burlington facility. The Times previously wrote about the conditions at these detention centers based on interviews with an individual who was detained on the Island. He described crowded sleeping conditions on floors and being bound by zip ties. 

This detainment comes nearly a year after an Island-wide sweep led by ICE last year resulted in the arrest of 20 individuals, who were taken from the Vineyard. While there haven’t been any large-scale arrests since last May, there were several individual arrests. Although some of those arrested carried criminal charges, others who were arrested had no criminal record, such as Newton Waite, the owner of Vineyard Caribbean Cuisine in Oak Bluffs, who was detained in September in Teaticket. Waite is currently in an ICE facility in Buffalo, N.Y. 

“We’ve seen this before — indiscriminate and dramatic removal of Islanders from our community with no transparency and no due process, timed to capture national attention just as the weather gets nice at the start of the summer season,” Cyr said. “Targeting immigrant Islanders instills a culture of fear and disrupts the stability of our region just as we are preparing to welcome scores of visitors. No one should live in fear or be uprooted without cause and due process.”

Editor’s note: Updated with comments from federal officials and an anonymous source who was with Rogerio da Silva Lima and his son, Nycolas de Al Varenga Lima.