David De Paula Souza, the Brazilian man pulled out of his car and taken away by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agents in front of a school bus filled with middle school students Sept. 23, is being held at a detention facility in Louisiana, according to an ICE website.
“The bus driver initially described the scene as looking like a possible abduction, as the individual being taken into custody was visibly emotional and distressed,” Brian Palladino, principal of Plymouth Community Intermediate School, wrote in an email to parents the morning of the incident.
After his detention, De Paula Souza was taken to an ICE facility in Batavia, New York, from where was able to phone a cousin and a Plymouth friend, Tatiana Nicomedio.
Nicomedio told the Independent that when they spoke to De Paula Souza, he reported that he was fine and had encountered many people he knew from Plymouth who had also been detained.
He has since been moved to the Jackson Parish Detention Center, in Jonesboro, Louisiana.
De Paula Souza was on his way to work when ICE agents followed him, stopped him at a traffic light in front of Hedge Elementary School, and took him away, leaving his car in the road near the intersection of Standish Avenue and Cherry Street, Nicomedio said.
His car keys were later left in her mailbox by someone who witnessed his arrest, she said.
De Paula Souza has been in the United States for three years, Nicomedio said, working in construction.
“He was always a good guy,” Nicomedio said. “He was always working. In the evenings, he would go to the gym. He went to church. He was always a very calm person.”
De Paula Souza, 26, is from the state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. He attended the Brazilian Foursquare Church in North Plymouth and was starting a second job as a photographer, according to Nicomedio. He never had any problems with the law, she emphasized, not so much as a traffic ticket.
“He did not deserve what happened to him,” she said.
His friends are raising funds to pay a bond in the hope that he can be released. They have set up a GoFundMe account that has raised more than $5,000.
His attorney, Ludovino Gardini, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
ICE did not respond to requests for more information.
Fred Thys can be reached at fred@plymouthindependent.org