After a quick shower, Gomes returned to the crowd of friends and other family members, hugging and thanking them for their support.
“I can’t wait to get back to school,” he told reporters at the house. “I have finals.”
The 18-year-old, who was born in Brazil and has lived in the United States since he was 6, was arrested Saturday morning by ICE agents as he was heading to volleyball practice with teammates. Immigration officials have said they were searching for his father, João Paulo Gomes Pereira, when they arrested Gomes, who has no criminal record.
The arrest sparked outrage in Milford and an outpouring of support for his family. More than 1,000 demonstrators, including Gomes’s classmates, protested his detention outside Milford Town Hall the next day. His volleyball teammates dedicated their MIAA Division 1 tournament game on Tuesday to Gomes, where they wore white shirts during warmups with messages such as “Justice 4 Mar” and “Free Marcelo.”
The day after Gomes was arrested, his attorney, Miriam Conrad, filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court in Boston alleging the government violated his due process rights by arresting him without cause and unlawfully detaining him. He entered the country legally with a student visa, which has lapsed but he is eligible for, and intends to apply for asylum, according to his lawyer.
On Thursday, an immigration judge in Chelmsford said Gomes should be released on bond.
Gomes was released from an ICE processing facility in Burlington, where he emerged wearing Crocs, shorts, a gold necklace with a cross on it, and a brown T-shirt with a sticker that read “Free Marcelo.” He choked up while speaking to reporters on the lawn outside the facility.
“I don’t want to cry, but I want to say, that place is not good,” Gomes said of the facility. “Ever since I got here, they had me in handcuffs.”
Gomes said he didn’t specifically know about his immigration status before his arrest because he was so young when he first came to the United States. He said that after he was arrested, he learned from federal authorities that he had overstayed a visa.
“I was in shock, I didn’t know what was going on,” Gomes said.
While inside detention, Gomes said he would often pray and speak about the Bible to the other men inside, many of whom were workers with families and children. He said he helped translate government documents for the men because he speaks English, Portuguese and Spanish.
On his wrist, Gomes wore a bracelet that a Brazilian friend inside the facility had made for him out of the foil blanket they were given — the only thing they had to sleep on, he said.
“I would watch people cry. People with kids,” Gomes said. “No one deserves to be down there … we don’t get to see the daylight.”
US Representatives Seth Moulton and Jake Auchincloss toured the Burlington ICE field office following Gomes’s release, and met with some ICE officials inside the facility. They said it did not have any showers and the holding cells did not have windows.
Moulton said they saw a “handful” of cells, each of which had half a dozen or more people in them. The Burlington facility is only meant to be a short-term processing center, representatives said.
“We obviously came here with a lot of concerns, some that we’ve heard directly from Marcelo,” Moulton said, adding they had also heard worries from ICE officials. The immigration system, Moulton said, “is broken.”
Both congressmen urged the Trump administration to work with Congress to pass bipartisan immigration reform. Auchincloss said Trump was “politicizing” the immigration system.
“He’s trying to sow fear amongst Americans, turn Americans against each other to distract from a series of disastrous economic policies that he’s pursuing,” Auchincloss said.
About 45 people were currently being held inside the facility, men and women, Auchincloss said, though Moulton noted Gomes told him “a lot” of detainees were moved out of the facility Thursday morning.
Moulton said that no one should be held inside the facility for days at a time.
“It’s obviously completely inappropriate, I would say inhumane, for long-term detention — and that’s what Marcelo experienced,” Moulton said.
After his release, Gomes said he went to McDonalds to get one of his favorite meals: chicken nuggets, french fries, and a Coke. He said he felt “optimistic” about returning to regular life following the week’s events, and that he would look to God to guide him.
“I’ll always remember this place, I’ll always remember how it was,” he said of his detainment.
Gomes also defended his father, João Paulo Gomes Pereira, who was the apparent target of the ICE operation.
“I heard a lot of people talk bad about my dad. But if you want to talk bad about my dad, you have to talk bad about me. Because he raised me,” Gomes said. “And if I have so much support from everyone from my town, then he doesn’t deserve any hate, because I was raised from him.”
While Gomes was in detention, his father would call him at night and would start crying, saying that he was too scared to even go outside of the house.
“I don’t want anyone to touch my dad,” he said.
Earlier Thursday, more than 100 people gathered outside the courthouse in Chelmsford where Gomes’s hearing was held, including dozens of teenagers from the Milford High volleyball team who wore T-shirts with Gomes’s number 10 on the back.
“We are so excited to get to see Marcelo, to get to be supportive of him,” said coach Andrew Manini.
The crowd erupted into cheers, whistles, and yelled Gomes’s name once they learned of his pending release. His girlfriend, Julianys Rentas, smiled as she embraced family members and friends outside the building.
“I’m very excited, I’m happy that they heard our community,” Rentas said. “I’m just very happy with the outcome.”
Speaking to reporters in Burlington, Gomes expressed gratitude to his supporters and his community in Milford.
“That’s the only place I call home,” he said. “I don’t see myself anywhere else but Milford.”
An earlier version of this article misidentified the type of judge who ordered Gomes’s release on bond on Thursday. It was an immigration judge.
Travis Andersen of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Jade Lozada contributed to this report.
Giulia McDonnell Nieto del Rio can be reached at giulia.mcdnr@globe.com. Follow her @giuliamcdnr. Nick Stoico can be reached at nick.stoico@globe.com. Marcela Rodrigues can be reached at marcela.rodrigues@globe.com.
