ICE arrested me on my way to volleyball practice.
Marcelo was a high schooler on his way to volleyball practice when ICE arrested him and took him into custody. He was 18, and had come to the US when he was seven years old. When he asked the agent why he was being arrested, he was told: “Because you’re illegal, you’re an immigrant.”
In prison, he was crowded into a cell with dozens of adult men. He gave his food away to the older and sicker-looking ones, saying that he felt like he could go without, as a high-school athlete. At one point he asked the guards for a bible, but was denied. Marcelo later learned they were looking for his father when they took him.
Meanwhile, his volleyball team, school, and community were rallying around him. They scheduled a school walkout to protest his detention, and his teammates wore jerseys with his name on them. He got a lawyer who argued his case tirelessly in the courts and in the media. After six days, he was finally released.
Today, he says he’s trying to get a semblance of his “normal life” back. But he also says that he recognizes that that will never be fully possible, because he’s become a symbol of hope for so many others whose lives have been turned upside down by ICE. He says: “I want to speak for them, because a lot of people don’t have a voice.”