After three years in the U.S., Anderson Costa is giving up on his American Dream and returning to Brazil.
In the above video, GBH News chronicled Costa’s last week living in Framingham as he said goodbye to friends that felt like family and to a city that felt like home.
Costa, 45, had applied for a visa and hoped to bring his family — still in Brazil — to the U.S. But after 2 ½ years with no decision on his visa application, he decided to go back.
“It’s not easy for immigration right now,” he said.
Costa is not alone. There is evidence the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown is driving Brazilians away from Framingham, a community they are widely credited with revitalizing in the 1980s and 90s.
The city’s public schools saw a 7% enrollment drop between October 2024 and 2025, according to the latest available data from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. It is impossible to parse out the many factors potentially accounting for this decline, said Framingham Superintendent Dr. Robert Tremblay, but he called the drop “unprecedented.”
Businesses downtown have reported a 40% drop in revenue, according to Downtown Framingham Inc. And Boston’s Brazilian consulate says that since January 2025, the number of Brazilian passports it has issued has tripled, a sign families are at least thinking about returning.
“We went through a couple of months and weeks where all we were doing was connecting people to their respective embassies so they could start getting their travel paperwork in order,” said Framingham State Rep. Priscilla Sousa.
Brazilian immigrants have been coming to Framingham in waves for decades, and today, Framingham has the highest concentration of Brazilians anywhere in the world outside of Brazil.
After World War II, Framingham, and particularly the downtown area, slid into a depression. Shoppers World — which opened on Rt. 9 in 1951 — had siphoned business away from downtown. In 1989, the General Motors plant closed, and the Dennison factory — which had been the largest employer in Framingham for almost a century — merged with another company in 1990 and moved its operations out of state, according to the Framingham History Center.
“It’s exactly at that time that the Brazilian immigration happened,” said Álvaro Lima, founder of the Instituto Diáspora Brasil, “reweaving the social infrastructure that was in crisis. By opening a business, by being in the streets, that revitalized Framingham.”
But since the start of President Trump’s second term, ICE has targeted the Brazilian community in Massachusetts and has been a regular presence in Framingham, sowing fear among residents regardless of their immigration status, said Lima.
”Most Brazilians today are afraid of going to work, to open their stores, to send their kids to school. They are being hunted in the streets they have revitalized,” he said. ”If you have the possibility of leave, you leave.”
“It’s a huge economic development issue,” said Sousa. “If that person closes up shop and leaves, will there be another business there or will that be a blighted space? Those are the realities that we’re facing right now. And we are so much closer to that coming true than I think people realize.”
And there is another risk, which — though less tangible — is no less potentially devastating for this small city that has been built and rebuilt by successive waves of immigrants, according to Lima.
“Buildings, you can build. That’s the easy part. But the social fabric that’s being rapidly unraveled, it is very difficult to weave this again,” he said. “And there is the trauma of living in a place that goes through a process like that.”
Costa allowed GBH News to film him driving to the airport for his flight back to Brazil. He called friends he would miss from the car and fought back tears as he told them, “It’s hard to say goodbye.”
