Rogério da Silva Lima, 42, the Brazilian father who was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody alongside his teenage son Nycolas de Alvarenga Lima (now 16) while fishing in Menemsha in May, left the U.S. on Saturday and returned to Brazil Sunday evening under a removal order.
Da Silva Lima, who was reached by phone in Brazil by a reporter from The Times, was asked how it felt to be back, and he lamented: “It was the worst feeling in the world. I love my sons, and I did not want to leave them behind.”
Da Silva Lima said that Nycolas, who was supposed to be a rising junior at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) this coming school year, is still living on the Island with his brother, Nayran, 17, who moved to Martha’s Vineyard after da Silva Lima was detained.
After a wrenching goodbye, the father said that he accepted his sons’ decision to stay on the Island to work and hopefully complete their studies.
“Nycolas is doing good, and he is going to study online,” da Silva Lima said. “I don’t know exactly how that is all going to happen.”
The father’s return to Brazil marks a significant chapter in a five-year odyssey that started when the father, his wife, and their two sons first crossed into the U.S. illegally, according to court records. Da Silva Lima’s wife left shortly after the family arrived in the U.S. Father and sons ended up here on Martha’s Vineyard and were woven into the Island’s vibrant immigrant community, where they found work and a support system.
“It was the worst feeling in the world. I love my sons, and I did not want to leave them behind.”
Rogério da Silva Lima
The Lima family’s saga has played out amid a crackdown on illegal immigration by the Trump administration and raids by ICE agents here on the Island that have been met with protests. But the father himself recognized that he would be legally compelled to return to his native Brazil, telling The Times, on June 25, “I know I have to leave.”
Amelia Lynn Ritenour, an attorney from Haven Immigration Law based in Portland, Maine, who represented da Silva Lima, said ICE required him to leave but he wasn’t put on a standard deportation flight. “Because he was cooperating, they just gave him a plane ticket and said ‘You have to leave,’” Ritenour said.
Da Silva Lima flew on a civilian flight and was not shackled like other immigrants deported by ICE. “It was never about him getting to stay forever. We always knew this was going to be the result. The question was whether his departure was super-inhumane or whether he left of his own will.”
It appears to have been the latter. Ritenour corroborated that da Silva Lima is back in Brazil, and that it was ICE who paid for his flight home.
Da Silva Lima and Nycolas were detained May 18 while on their first-ever boat fishing trip together. They had left home around 5 am to help a friend launch a skiff in Menemsha, with plans to fish. The father-son duo had fished together near their hometown, Colatina, Espírito Santo, in Brazil, for years, as well as along the Charles River in Boston, and from the shore off Chappaquiddick, but hadn’t been out on a boat trip together.
The Coast Guard said they received a report that morning of a vessel possibly in distress south of Martha’s Vineyard, and boarded the recreational vessel around 10 am. The Coast Guard pulled alongside the skiff, asked questions, and looked for identification, and circled back two more times, identifying the father and son; the Coast Guard officers said they needed additional immigration status verification. After checking with ICE, they identified one passenger, da Silva Lima, as a Brazilian national, and Nycolas as a minor traveling with his father.
The Coast Guard said they worked with ICE to keep the family together during the transfer. ICE took the two from Woods Hole into custody on the mainland. Court records show the government intended to send them to a family detention facility in Texas. That same night, Island advocates reached Ritenour to represent them and filed an emergency habeas corpus petition in the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts to block the transfer.
According to past reporting by The Times, da Silva Lima said the first stop came less than half an hour after they pushed off the Menemsha dock. They had barely gotten lines in the water and had not caught any fish yet.
The Lima family immigrated to the U.S. in 2021. Initially, they lived in Boston, but during the past two years, da Silva Lima worked as a carpenter and painter on the Vineyard, first taking the ferry from Cape Cod, then moving to the Island with Nycolas. They applied for asylum in 2023, but the case was rejected, as was their appeal to the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, and an immigration judge ordered their removal in 2023 after the asylum claim was denied.
Nycolas and da Silva Lima spent the first night in a small cell at the ICE processing center in Burlington, Mass., then three nights under guard in a hotel because a minor can’t be held at the processing center. Nycolas was released after four days, on May 22, and eventually returned to the Island; da Silva Lima was moved to Plymouth County Correctional Facility, where he stayed for five nights before returning on May 27 to Burlington, where his release was processed. He was released with an ankle monitor. Community members, including volunteers from the Island chapter of LUCE Immigrant Justice Network, created after the ICE raid of May 2025, brought him back to the Island.
U.S. District Court of Massachusetts Judges Indira Talwani and Julia E. Kobick ordered that the two remain in Massachusetts while the case was being reviewed. Talwani ordered that da Silva Lima be released, after finding ICE had not followed required procedure after his removal order came.
Ritenour said that after a removal order, the government is supposed to remove someone within 90 days. If that does not happen, the person is placed on an order of supervision. Ritenour said da Silva Lima was never placed on that supervision after the 90-day window had passed. “When the judge ordered his release, she specifically said this was not about him staying in America forever,” Ritenour said. “This was about ICE following their own policies to remove him.”
Ritenour said the habeas corpus filed in May was never a bid for da Silva Lima to remain in the country permanently. “When we filed the habeas to get him out, we always knew he would have to leave at some point,” she said. “The question was about how he was going to leave the country, whether it was going to be abruptly in shackles, or if he was going to have some time and dignity and humanity to leave on his own terms, and so we got that second option, where he got to leave on a civilian flight, and he wasn’t shackled.”
Ritenour said Saturday’s departure closed da Silva Lima’s case and is consistent with Talwani’s order. The court released him on an order of supervision, and ICE later revoked that supervision properly within the 90-day period, and sent him home on a civilian flight because he was cooperating.
“[ICE doesn’t] get the benefit of not following regulations,” Ritenour said. “Yes, he has a removal order. Yes, you have the right to take him under circumstances. But it’s not going to be out fishing with your son before you’ve done any paperwork.”
Ritenour said Nycolas still has a removal order and that there are legal options for immigrant children to remain in the United States.
The initial arrests in May prompted a protest in Menemsha and a student walkout at MVRHS. Ritenour said The Times’ earlier reporting was cited in court as judges reconstructed the timeline when the Coast Guard and ICE acted and played a role in the release.
In an extended interview with The Times, the father reflected on his American dream as an immigrant and how it has ended: “I did not plan to go back. They told me I had to. So it is very complicated, because I went to the U.S. to achieve my dreams, and that dream was interrupted, so I sort of lost my way.”
Asked how he feels about the U.S. now, da Silva Lima added, “I see the U.S. as an excellent country where you can change your life in a financial way. Brazil is very good as a place to live. The people are warmer, but for changing your life, it’s hard to describe how much better the U.S. is in terms of opportunity and building a life.”
As for the future, da Silva Lima said he still hopes to someday be reunited with his two sons, and to fish together as they have always loved to do since they were young boys. “It is just very hard to have any real plan right now.”
Interviews with da Silva Lima were conducted in Portuguese and translated by Times reporter Maria Barros.
