A Martha’s Vineyard high school student who was detained by the U.S. Coast Guard and handed over to ICE last week has been released.
Attorney Amelia Ritenour said the 15-year-old was released Friday after an emergency hearing.
Nycolas de Al Varenga Lima, 15, and his father, Rogerio da Silva Lima, were detained by the Coast Guard in an unusual arrest while fishing together for the first time off the village of Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard on May 18.
The Coast Guard said it was responding to a boat that appeared to be in distress when it came across the father and son, and declined to comment further on why it returned, detained the two, and brought them to Woods Hole for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to take them into custody.
On Friday, U.S. District of Massachusetts judge Julia Kobick ordered that ICE release the high school student to an older brother.
In a separate hearing on Monday, Judge Indira Talwani ordered that the father should also be released by noon Wednesday.
Kobick said the government has until June 5 to explain why the child was properly detained and his constitutional rights were not violated. ICE can’t re-detain him while Kobick waits for their response.
Ritenour picked de Al Varenga Lima up from detention later on Friday at Burlington’s ICE processing center and reunited him with family. He and his father had been detained at an unknown hotel, the location of which was not disclosed in court proceedings. The government said that the location hadn’t been disclosed for agency safety reasons.
There is no family detention facility for parents and children to be together in Massachusetts. The government was considering sending da Silva Lima and de Al Varenga Lima to Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, one of the only facilities in the country to hold family units, until a previous judicial order kept them in Massachusetts.
Dilley is the facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father were detained in January after being arrested in Minnesota en route home from elementary school, a detention that was widely covered internationally.
Ritenour feels like the case could go in the child’s favor.
“[The judge] says that she tentatively agrees with all of our points, but because it’s such nuanced issue that’s really never been decided before, in the First Circuit especially, she wants to give the government time to respond,” said Ritenour.
Ritenour said the strongest argument is a procedural one, beside concerns of due process.
“Essentially, there are very strict and specific statutes and regulations that govern how people are supposed to be treated once they get a removal order,” she said. “Those statutes or regulations were never really followed. There’s a lot of issues with warrants and with whether or not they can essentially just grab anybody who has a removal order without any pre-deprivation process or individualized determination.”
The father and son are originally from Brazil. Da Silva Lima entered the United States in 2021, was admitted by an immigration officer and claimed asylum. The government says his asylum application was denied, and his appeal dismissed in 2024.
An ICE media representatives say he and his son have a deportation order as a result of that, and they can keep individuals detained for at least six months before deporting them.
Father’s habeas case hearing
In her Tuesday afternoon hearing, Judge Talwani said that after da Silva Lima exhausted his appeals in 2024 and had a final order of removal, the Department of Homeland Security would have had a standard, Congressionally approved three-month period to detain and deport him, yet it didn’t do so.
“That’s the mandate they gave to you. Not you personally, but whoever was in that seat in 2024 when this order came down, correct?” said Talwani.
The government attorney agreed, and Talwani continued, “So why do you get a new bite at the apple of detaining them for 90 days?”
The government attorney argued that under current case law, the Department of Homeland Security can interpret that another way that means da Silva Lima can be detained now.
Talwani ordered da Silva Lima’s release by noon on Wednesday on procedural and due process grounds, and said he will need to abide by certain “appropriate” conditions.
“What I don’t want to see is, all of a sudden, a $7,500 bail, as I’ve been seeing in some of these,” adding that “there’s no suggestion of a flight risk.”
It is possible for the Department of Homeland Security to still deport da Silva Lima in the future if he isn’t detained.
“This is not an open invitation for Mr. Da Silva to get to stay here, obviously that whatever is happening between now and when he is removed that it’s not being spent in detention,” she said.
Talwani also denied a motion to consolidate da Silva Lima’s case with his son’s.
Ritenour said after the hearing, “Today, Judge Talwani found that the constitution protects all people, even if they have a removal order, from having their due process rights violated.”
Da Silva Lima is currently detained at Plymouth county’s ICE detention facility.
