Their social media photos reflect a life of faith, family and music, singing with their daughter at home and at church events.
That drastically changed for the Marlborough family on Monday after Suyanne Boechat Amaral kissed her husband Lucas Dos Santos Amaral goodbye before he went to work at their small painting business.
A few minutes later, Dos Santos Amaral, originally from Brazil, was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. He’s one example of a growing number of immigrants who are detained with no criminal record. Being in the country illegally is a civil violation, not a criminal one.
Trump made the deportation of undocumented immigrants a key point of his campaign platform, and has put into place a number of executive orders that change immigrants’ legal statuses to fulfill that promise.
Boechat Amaral and state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, who represents the area, described how ICE pulled over Dos Santos Amaral, and asked for his ID. Boechat Amaral called the traffic stop “random.”
“They said they were looking for someone who looked like him,” she said. She added that even though Amaral wasn’t the individual they were seeking, agents reviewed his name and discovered he overstayed his visa, then took him into custody.
Eldridge said it was “clearly racial profiling by ICE.”
Read the full story at GBH News: www.wgbh.org/
Publisher’s Note: GBH and Massachusetts Latino News (MALN) are partners in providing greater visibility and voice to local Hispanic-Latinos communities.