A Martha’s Vineyard high school student and his father were detained by the U.S. Coast Guard, then transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody while on their first fishing trip together off the island this past week.Rogerio Da Silva Lima and his son, Nycolas De Al Varenga Lima, 15, were fishing on a boat out of a port with a friend on Monday morning, as first reported by MassLive’s media partner, the Vineyard Gazette. Coast Guard officers approached the trio on the boat “initially to do a routine safety check,” then allowed them to continue fishing, the friend told the Gazette. Then, Coast Guard officers returned and asked for boater registration and identification cards — but the trio was, again, allowed to continue fishing. However, about an hour-and-a-half later, the Coast Guard “returned to ask more questions and ask for documents from the father and son,” the friend said. The Coast Guard then took Da Silva Lima and De Al Varenga Lima into custody on their third round. The officers initially asked if the 15-year-old could be handed to other family or stay with the friend on the boat, but the officers “later decided to take both.”A spokesperson for the Coast Guard confirmed it boarded a vessel near the Island and identified a father and son “who required further immigration status verification,” the Gazette reported on Tuesday. The agency then “coordinated with ICE to ensure both individuals could remain together during the transfer process” and arranged a transfer point in Woods Hole into ICE custody. They were then brought to the Burlington ICE facility. As of Tuesday, the father and son believed they may be brought to Texas, their friend who was on the boat told the Gazette. Da Silva Lima was listed “in ICE custody” on its detainee locator as of 1:30 p.m. on Friday. No detention facility was listed, though it stated to “call ICE for details” and listed the Boston field office number. His son, De Al Varenga Lima, did not show up on the detainee locator site. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson confirmed with MassLive that the pair was arrested in Woods Hole on Monday. Da Silva Lima illegally entered the country with his son in 2021 and both were issued an order of removal on Aug. 23, 2023, according to the agency. Both are to “remain in ICE custody pending removal,” the spokesperson said. What do Islanders think?Da Silva Lima is an employee on the Island who worked for business owner Rory Moreis in recent years, the Gazette reported, while his 15-year-old son is a student at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School. Moreis described Da Silva Lima as a “hard worker” who is “determined, dedicated, no limit to the hours of days to work, not a complaint.”The family friend who’d been out fishing with the father and son on the boat when they were detained — who asked the Gazette to remain anonymous — said it was the pair’s first time fishing together. He said he “told all my friends about this” detainment, “because nobody wants this to happen.”“They’re not going to go out fishing because they don’t want a problem,” the friend told the Gazette. The local Island chapter of LUCE, an immigrant justice network in Massachusetts, quickly mobilized to try to keep the family in the state. They communicated with the school district, seasonal Island resident and prison reform advocate Andrea James and Moreis’ daughter, Alexis Moreis, who is a tribal council member with the Wampanoag Tribe of Chappaquiddick. She stated the Tribe is “offended and disgusted by the deportation of two people that we claim in our community,” and that it sees this “as an offense to sustenance rights and being an Island resident.”A private donor was secured to file a habeas corpus petition in Massachusetts U.S. District Court in Boston and court records showed the petition was granted Tuesday, meaning the family is supposed to remain in Massachusetts. Schools Superintendent Richard Smith said the district was working to make sure there are proper contacts for De Al Varenga Lima, a place for him to live and familial supervision, should he be able to come home.“I want the community to understand that we, as a school system, are working hard to support the child and bring that child back,” Smith told the Gazette. To Alexis Moreis, the role of the Coast Guard in the arrest was alarming — especially given it appeared to be a change from last year’s arrests, when the Coast Guard helped with the transport of the detainees to the mainland, but did not appear to play an active role in the arrests themselves. “The attitude wasn’t what a lot of people have expected from the Coast Guard. I think that’s really the difference,” Alexis Moreis said. She also noted this was the first child to be “detained from our Island community and it’s insane.” State Sen. Julian Cyr, D-Cape and Islands, told MassLive he was “outraged and troubled” by what he called an arbitrary detention by the Coast Guard. “We’ve seen this before — indiscriminate and dramatic removal of Islanders from our community with no transparency and no due process, timed to capture national attention just as the weather gets nice at the start of the summer season,“ Cyr said. He stated the Coast Guard’s “primary mission is to protect people on our waters” and this action not only appeared to be “racially charged,” but “violates that core mission” by being “carried out by federal agencies with no role in immigration enforcement.”“Targeting immigrant Islanders instills a culture of fear and disrupts the stability of our region just as we are preparing to welcome scores of visitors. No one should live in fear or be uprooted without cause and due process,” Cyr said.