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When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Rosane Ferreira-De Oliveira last week in Worcester, Massachusetts, the situation rapidly devolved into chaos and community outrage. Multiple recordings of the incident went viral, but what bystanders did not capture on video was how federal agents were able to draw Ferreira-De Oliveira out in public where they could arrest her in the first place.
ICE used Ferreira-De Oliveira’s loved ones to lure her out of her home — where agents couldn’t arrest her — and onto Eureka Street, three people with direct knowledge of the matter and another source familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone.
Two of the sources independently say that ICE used the undocumented Brazilian woman’s daughters and grandchild as “bait,” in an operation that the Trump administration is now touting as another victory in its sprawling, often lawless crackdown on both legal and illegal immigration.
Last Thursday, 21-year-old Augusta Clara, her three-month-old baby, and Clara’s 17-year-old sister had just begun driving away from their home when they were stopped by ICE agents. The three of them and Ferreira-De Oliveira, who entered the United States in 2022, are part of a Brazilian immigrant family who live together in the greater Boston area. (The family members do not all share the same immigration status.)
Ferreira-De Oliveira, who is 40 years old, was still at their nearby home when she received a phone call from one of her daughters, who said ICE had pulled them over and were threatening to arrest Clara.
Ferreira-De Oliveira’s frightened daughter told her mother that she needed to leave the home now and come meet them on the street, because ICE was telling them that if they arrested Clara, they weren’t allowed to leave the baby in the hands of a minor. So, the feds insisted, grandma needed to rush over to take custody of the baby.
Shortly after Ferreira-De Oliveira arrived on the scene, ICE took her into custody. The agents suddenly no longer seemed interested in the 21-year-old daughter. ICE did not arrest her or her 17-year-old sibling.
The feds never produced a warrant for Clara, which they claimed they had, and it is unclear if one ever existed.
“They are traumatized for life,” says one of the sources with direct knowledge of the situation.
“We have an undocumented family who came to this country for reasons that are not public, who all live together, and they are now torn apart in a very violent and sensational manner, which is now on video for them to see for the rest of their lives,” this person adds. “When I was with the 17-year-old, she kept watching the videos, and I kept wanting to tell her, ‘Don’t watch the videos.’ They’re only going to re-traumatize you. The whole family is still in shock, [and] these girls’ lives are shattered.”
In a draft for a potential public-fundraising message, Clara appears to confirm certain details of this reporting. “Everything started the day before when they arrested my partner, the father of my three-month-old son, while he was driving to work,” reads Clara’s draft, sent by her attorney, Andrew Lattarulo, to Rolling Stone this afternoon.
Rolling Stone has not yet independently verified some of the claims.
The draft continues: “He committed no crimes or offenses against anybody. His only mistake was honking at a car that cut him off. The car ended up being an undercover ICE vehicle and they decided to arrest him over this. Later that morning, ICE agents showed up and knocked on my door to return my partner’s car and to also tell me to show up on the next day to sign some documents at an immigration building. I left my home the next morning to do so, and took my 17-year-old sister along. This is when ICE stopped my car and said I was under arrest, but since I was with my baby somebody else needed to be there to take him. So I called my mother to come over and take my son for me, and then the immigration agents wanted to arrest her as well. By now the neighborhood started to take notice of the situation and were filming it with their phones … I am currently staying with friends, as I am too afraid to return home. I am unable to retrieve any of mine and my baby’s things and I am unable to work because of my current predicament.”
(Update: after this story was published, Clara posted her GoFundMe fundraising page, which included some revised copy compared to the draft her attorney previously shared with Rolling Stone. On her GoFundMe, she claims, “The next morning, ICE came to my home, demanding I return my partner’s car and report to sign immigration paperwork.” Her lawyer confirms that this second version of that detail is what she meant to say initially, and he cited a translation issue and language barrier.)
In justifying Ferreira-De Oliveira’s arrest, the Trump administration has attempted to portray the detained grandmother as a “violent criminal illegal alien,” with the Department of Homeland Security noting in a statement provided to Rolling Stone that she was previously “arrested by local police for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon” on a “pregnant victim.” However, according to NBC’s Boston affiliate, “her daughter, Augusta Clara, said it was merely a domestic dispute with her 17-year-old sister.” Public records show that the alleged dangerous weapon was a phone-charger cable. Sources with direct knowledge of the matter tell Rolling Stone that her daughters and her family want the mother brought home.
ICE wasn’t the only law enforcement agency on the scene.
The Worcester Police Department responded to the site of the arrest last Thursday, citing a group of about two dozen people trying to prevent ICE from conducting the arrest. “The crowd was unruly, and several people were putting their hands on federal agents and Worcester officers in an attempt to keep the vehicle and the arrestee from leaving,” the police said. “Worcester officers attempted to deescalate the situation and keep everyone safe.”
Video obtained by Telemundo shows multiple Worcester police officers pushing a woman and slamming Ferreira-De Oliveira’s teenage daughter into the ground. Worcester police arrested the teenage girl, alleging that she had had a newborn baby in her arms before passing it off to someone else, and then appeared as if she was going to run in front of a moving vehicle. Worcester police also arrested a 38-year-old school board candidate named Ashley Springs, alleging she “pushed multiple officers” and “threw an unknown liquid substance on them.”
“Unfortunately, two individuals were arrested after several attempts by WPD officers to deescalate the chaotic situation, which included the endangerment of an infant,” Worcester City Manager Eric Batista said in a statement.
Massachusetts state law prohibits local law enforcement from assisting ICE.
Andrew Lattarulo, the lawyer representing Clara, tells Rolling Stone that the Massachusetts attorney general’s office told him on Monday that it is looking into what happened, including regarding the conduct of the local police.
“On Monday, the deputy director of the police accountability unit in the civil rights division in the Massachusetts attorney general’s office called my office saying she was looking into the incident that happened in Worcester, Massachusetts, regarding my client,” Lattarulo says. “She said she was wondering if we could assist her and if my client would talk to her. We followed up via email, and we are in the process of setting up a time to meet or talk further.”
Lattarulo, who works in the Boston area, says that he also told the deputy director that he has information to provide to the attorney general’s team regarding how “local law enforcement and state police [are] violating state law by assisting ICE, and holding people until ICE gets them.… In Massachusetts, it’s illegal for these police departments to assist ICE, and since they’re continuously doing it, someone needs to look back and investigate them.”
The lawyer adds that the state attorney general’s office indicated to him that “they want to look into that, as well,” and that they plan to discuss that matter more at a later date with him.
Spokespeople for the Massachusetts attorney general’s office and the Worcester Police Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on this story.
The Worcester community has been protesting the incident since last Thursday, including through a “Hands Off Worcester Mothers” demonstration on Sunday. The group Worcester Indivisible planned another protest at City Hall on Tuesday, which appears to have caused City Hall to close its doors and hold city business virtually. City spokesperson Tom Matthews said the closure came over “public safety concerns, out of an abundance of caution.” The Boston Globe reported that multiple city council members received bomb threats in the wake of the incident.
Meanwhile, Ferreira-De Oliveira’s family and their allies and friends are still searching for answers about what happened that day. Her daughters, sources say, have been repeatedly asking: “Where is my mom?”
