Back in January, Lucas Dos Santos Amaral was pulled over by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Marlborough, Massachusetts. Agents detained him even though he had no criminal record, only a civil offense for overstaying his visa and living in the country illegally. GBH’s Sarah Betancourt has been following Dos Santos Amaral and his wife’s story and joined GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to share her exclusive update on the family’s situation.
Arun Rath: It’s a remarkable story. Just to remind our audience — Dos Santos Amaral was on his way to a painting job one morning and was pulled over by ICE in January. They had been looking for someone else, but they detained him after finding he had an expired visa and was undocumented. Tell us what happened after that.
Sarah Betancourt: So, Dos Santos Amaral, a Brazilian immigrant, dealt with three weeks of detention at Plymouth’s ICE detention center in Massachusetts and then had a transfer to Texas, where he was bounced to two infamous detention centers.
In a very rare move, an immigration judge allowed Lucas to be released on bond from Texas a couple of weeks ago.
Then, Dos Santos Amaral sat down with me on Wednesday with his wife, Suyanne, and 3-year-old daughter at a State House immigrant event . It’s really rare to hear from someone who’s been detained and released from ICE, so this was his reaction to being released.
Lucas Dos Santos Amaral, pre-recorded: It was a terrible 27 days. So now, I’m happy. I’m very happy with my girls, with God. I’m a little scared still, still scared — I never went to the jail [before this incident], so it’s new for me. All this.
Betancourt: Dos Santos Amaral had never been incarcerated in his life. He was very emotional throughout the interview. At one point, he called it a “nightmare situation.” One particular moment that stuck out to him was the day he was transferred to Texas without knowing what was going on, shackled and put on a flight for eight hours. We talked about what was going through his head.
Dos Santos Amaral, pre-recorded: I was praying. I was praying a lot. I was speaking to God to not let me go to Brazil because I cannot … I can’t imagine life without my daughter.
Rath: Praying like that, it sounds like faith plays a big role in his life.
Betancourt: It is. He and Suyanne are actually church performers around Massachusetts when he’s not working at the paint business. They talked a lot about their faith when discussing Dos Santos Amaral’s transfer from Karnes Detention Center to Pearsall, a packed detention center closer to the border. There, Lucas experienced difficulties.
Dos Santos Amaral, pre-recorded: Pearsall was hell. Horrible. They tried to kill you — kill you, like psychologically. Yeah. I was destroyed psychologically. There was a hundred men inside of the cell, in the room.
Rath: Wow. But it was there, though, where Lucas eventually found out he would be freed, right?
Betancourt: Well, he went to a bond hearing, which was postponed many, many times, which caused him a lot of anxiety. That day, he was so anxious that he didn’t understand the moment when his attorney, Eloa Celedon, was able to convince the judge that he wasn’t a flight risk. He has a wife, a business, a U.S. citizen daughter and a child on the way. So, Celedon had to call him later to let him know he’d been released on $8,000 bail. He was released a few days later — but with just a piece of paper. He was actually never given back his identification, so then his wife had to step in.
Suyanne Boechat Amaral, pre-recorded: He stayed the whole day at the airport because I had to have a friend go get him — bring his license, his ID to him. So we paid two tickets: his ticket and my friend’s ticket.
Betancourt: And then, they made it back the next day.
Rath: So, Sarah, he’s home now — Lucas — but the case isn’t over. He has an immigration court date, I’m assuming, in Texas. How is he adjusting? How is he living with that hanging over him?
Betancourt: He’s adjusting, but he described feeling a lot of trauma. He told me that driving by the same light every morning where he was stopped by ICE makes him really anxious, and he does worry about being detained again.
Dos Santos Amaral, pre-recorded: They can do anything, any time. What happened to me, I think, was to open the door for more cases … like me. I think God is working for something bigger.
Rath: Sarah, we know that there are a lot of other cases we’ve heard about like Amaral — people who’ve been detained whose only crime, or only infraction, was staying over their visa. Do we have any sense of how many people have gone through something like this, given how many have not been released, like Amaral was?
Betancourt: It’s very unclear. ICE doesn’t actually release numbers that note that someone is undocumented and has no criminal record. We have heard of several people in the communities around Boston — Chelsea, in particular — that have been allegedly undocumented and detained by ICE. But it’s something that really, probably, won’t even be clear for years to come.
