MARLBORO, MASS. (WHDH) - A 14-year-old girl who was living in Marlboro has been released from ICE custody in New York after a federal judge ordered she be brought to Massachusetts.
Van Celedon said he saw ICE agents take the teenager into custody in a parking lot in Marlboro Tuesday, and immediately grabbed his cellphone to start recording the scene.
“It was a very tense sitution,” said Celedon. “Very upsetting because no one knows what was going on. Everybody felt helpless.”
Attorney Andrew Lattarulo said federal agents then drove the teenager to the John F. Kennedy Federal Building in Boston, where she remained for 10 hours. He says the girl is from Brazil and in the United States on a visitor’s visa.
Lattarulo said despite an emergency order to keep the girl in Massachusetts, she was taken to a facility in New York. The move sparked congressional outrage.
“I don’t think the way to demonstrate care about child welfare is to incarcerate someone, take them thousands of miles from their family, and subject them to inquiry and investigation without adults present,” said Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley.
After the judge’s ruling to release the girl, she was brought back to Massachusetts and reunited with her aunt.
“One of our theories was they were using the kid as bait to get the father, who is MIA and may or may not be wanted,” said Lattarulo. “Why else would you detain a child for so long?”
Congresswoman Lori Trahan echoed his statement, saying ICE was using the girl to get her father to turn himself in so they could deport him.
In a statement, Trahan said, “To be absolutely clear, a 14-year-old girl should never have been detained in the first place. The fact that it took a federal court order to return a child to her family is a damning indictment of DHS policy.”
Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis opposes those statements. She said on March 11, ICE conducted an operation to arrest two “illegal aliens from Brazil and suspected Primeiro Comando da Massachusetts gang members.”
In a statement, Bis said ICE, “did NOT arrest a 14-year-old girl—our officers RESCUED her from suspected gang members.”
A 14-year-old girl with the two men was determined to have no familial relationship to either individual, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“Based on this information and to ensure the safety and security of the minor, she was placed in the custody of Health and Human Services, Office of Refugee Resettlement within hours of the initial encounter,” Bis said. “As standard protocol, she will remain in ORR custody pending the identification of legal guardians.”
“It’s the same playbook. We grab you, we detain you, we don’t tell anybody where you are, and then send you hundreds of miles away making it very hard for friends, family and legal counsel to find you,” Lattarulo said.
Lattarulo said the girl’s mother passed away, and her father is not in the picture. She had been living with her 18-year-old and 21-year-old brothers in Marlboro. The girl has since been reunited with her aunt.
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