Mother Left Searching After ICE Seizes 13-Year-Old Without Due Process

There are few things more sacred to a mother than hearing her child’s voice. For Josiele Berto, those phone calls are no longer ordinary moments of joy—they are lifelines to her 13-year-old son, Arthur, who now sits in immigration custody, shuttled across states like cargo, without explanation. “I only talk to him – never to any official who could explain what kind of place it is or what’s happening,” she said, her voice heavy with disbelief. The nightmare began when Everett, Massachusetts police called to say Arthur had been arrested and she needed to pick him up. But by the time she arrived, he was gone. ICE had already taken him—without a word, without a reason, without any regard for a mother’s plea.

“They didn’t give me any information,” Berto recalled. The family, asylum seekers from Brazil since 2021, spent days begging for answers. Everett officials insisted they did not contact federal authorities, yet ICE appeared within hours. A 13-year-old child, broken foot still healing, was taken at a bus stop—and swallowed by a federal system that refuses to explain itself.

The Department of Homeland Security only spoke publicly through social media, branding Arthur as a public threat with an “extensive rap sheet,” claiming he carried a firearm. Yet even Everett’s own mayor refuted that: “No guns were found.” To level that kind of accusation against a child—publicly, on record—before due process is beyond reckless; it is cruel. His attorney, Andrew Lattarulo, demanded basic constitutional protection: “Every individual is entitled to due process of law. That principle applies even more strongly to a minor.”

Arthur has already been moved between multiple facilities, from Massachusetts to Virginia, making it harder for his family and counsel to reach him. His attorney called this transfer a tactic that “raises serious concerns about access to counsel.” Meanwhile, his mother waits by the phone, her younger son asking if his brother has called. The fear now extends beyond Arthur—“We don’t know if they’ll come for us next,” Berto said.

This is not simply a legal case. It is a moral crisis. A 13-year-old child has been taken from his mother, hidden by bureaucracy, and spoken of like an adult criminal. “Right now, I just want my son free,” she said. Everything else can wait—because no mother should fight shadows just to know her child is alive.

Link: CNN