The 21st Century Gestapo — ICE

June 7/8, 2025

“The people invent their oppressors: they wish to believe in them. They wish to be free of their freedom: released from their liberty

The long labor of liberty ended!”

Archibald MacLeish, “The Fall of the City”

On a day in which I had had a lot to do and found that the evening got away from me, we learned that Trump (Donald John sounds too personable under the circumstances) deployed the National Guard to put down the protests against the actions of ICE in Los Angeles. On that day I learned of a story that hit closer to home than most.

A week ago today, ICE agents arrested Milford High School junior Marcelo Gomes Da Silva as he was on his way to volleyball practice last Saturday. An honor student, Marcelo is also a member of the Milford High School band. He also has been in this country having been brought here by his parents since he was a young child, been in the Milford school system since he was old enough to go to school and has never been in trouble for any reason. He was detained by ICE agents who claim to have been looking for his father when they picked him up. Why they were looking for his father is unclear. He is now free after a federal judge ordered him to be —on

$2,000 bond. Marcello described having to stay in the ICE Burlington, Massachusetts detention facility for six days, sleeping on a concrete floor with a mylar blanket, in an open room with a toilet and no privacy. What the $2,000 bond is for is also not clear. Nor is it clear to this admittedly ancient Cold War era veteran of the USAF officer corps how deporting an honor high school student who, for all practical purposes, has lived here all his life makes us more safe from terrorism.

So what makes this story close to home? No, I don’t know young Marcello. But for 15 years after I retired and before we moved to New Jersey 7 years ago, my wife and o lived in a condo in Bellingham, Mass. right next door to Milford. Our community hospital was there. Most of our doctors were there. The restaurants we frequented including a 1950s Cantonese style Chinese food place were there. As was our boss in the volunteer Medicare counseling work we did. A mostly blue collar lower to mid middle class town with a high percentage of immigrants, Milford represented old fashioned Americana. Which is part of what makes an ICE raid there on a high school kid all the more outrageous.

Wild Turkeys in the Snow in Bellingham, Massachusetts. February, 2015.