Federal agents approached the family’s vehicle Gomes was driving while he sat in the driveway of a classmate, to whom he was providing a ride to Milford High School for volleyball practice. They asked where he was born, she said.

The Brazilian-native was then taken into custody, a scenario the family didn’t think would happen because the teen has no criminal history, she said.

“He never stopped studying, playing, and dedicating himself to achieving his goals,” she said. “He’s a golden boy. Wherever he goes, he blesses people.”

Marcelo Gomes da Silva’s volleyball medals are seen in his bedroom in front of a photo of him with his girlfriend Julianys Rentas Figueroa in Milford on Monday. Gomes was detained by ICE on his way to volleyball practice. Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

The arrest of the Milford High School junior, who is on the high school volleyball team, is involved in his church youth group, and plays drums for his church’s worship service, has sparked outrage and protest in Milford. Friends and family of the teenager questioned why ICE would arrest a teenager who they said was a dedicated student athlete with no criminal record.

“We, immigrants, are not criminals. We came here to work, to provide a better future for our family,” Daiane Pereira said. “Criminals don’t get up at 5 a.m. with a uniform to go work. To paint, to build houses, to clean bathrooms and wash floors.”

Federal immigration officials on Monday said Gomes was not their intended target. Instead, ICE officers were looking for the teen’s father, said Patricia Hyde, field director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in Boston, on Monday at a news conference.

Hyde said Gomes was driving his father’s car and when agents didn’t find Gomes Pereira, they detained Gomes instead.

The so-called “collateral arrest,” in which agents arrest immigrants in the country illegally even if they are not an intended target, was previously banned by the Biden administration, but reinstated under President Trump.

Officials said his father, Gomes Pereira, was spotted by local authorities driving recklessly at speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour through residential areas. No court records were found to indicate any arrests or tickets for reckless driving or speeding. Instead, records show the elder Gomes Pereira was stopped for running a stop sign and driving without a license in July 2023, but the charges were dismissed on recommendation of the probation department the following November. He paid $100 in court costs.

Hyde blamed so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions for the number of collateral arrests in Massachusetts, saying agents would not have to go out searching in communities if local authorities would assist with removal operations.

“When we go into the community and find others who are unlawfully here, we are going to arrest them,” Hyde said.

A habeas petition for Gomes is now pending in US District Court in Boston.

Miriam Conrad, who is representing Gomes in federal court, said the goal is to convince a federal judge to order the teenager’s release during the pendency of his immigration court case. (Judges have done so in two other high-profile immigration cases recently.)

Conrad said she was told by ICE Monday morning Gomes is being held at the ICE detention facility in Burlington and the court has not set a hearing date in his case.

Gomes is now in a detention cell with 25 other men who were also arrested, he told his mother over the phone. He’s the only teenager in a group of working men, she said.

None of the men in his cell speak English, he said, and he is helping them with translation, which he often does for classmates at school and for friends or family whenever needed.

Students embraced outside of Milford High School after walking out of school to protest the detention of Marcelo Gomes Da Silva in Milford on June 2.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

On Monday, US District Judge George O’Toole Jr., who was assigned Gomes’s case, ordered the government not to move Gomes outside Massachusetts “without providing the court 48 hours advance notice of the move” and the reason for it. He gave the government 14 days to respond to the petition filed by Gomes.

Conrad said deciding to arrest a high school student is likely going to leave the large Brazilian immigrant community in Milford “terrified.”

“If you can arrest some kid on his way to volleyball practice who is not a danger to anyone in school and isn’t posing a danger to anyone, that’s got to terrify everyone, either for themselves, for their friends, their family and their neighbors. But, unfortunately, that seems to be the point.”

Many teachers joined protestors Sunday to protest Gomes’s arrest, and on Monday, students walked out of school, rallying in support of Gomes. Matt Zaccarino, an eighth grade English teacher at Stacey Middle School, said students are terrorized.

Students prayed outside of Milford High School after walking out of school to protest the detention of Marcelo Gomes Da Silva in Milford on June 2.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

“It’s terrible what’s happening here in this community,” he said Monday. “I’ve been teaching here about 20 years, and I’ve lived here in this area my whole life. And some of these people, they’re hard-working people that want to support their families, and their families are getting split up.”

On Sunday, Governor Maura Healey said she was “disturbed and outraged” by the teen’s detainment. The first-term Democrat, who served for eight years as the state’s attorney general, said she supports ICE arresting those with criminal backgrounds, but said they’ve “made mistakes” before.

“By their own admission, they have also arrested several hundreds of individuals in Massachusetts and taken them away who do not have criminal records,” she said. “Everybody should be following the law here, following the rules here. ICE should be producing information about who has been arrested, what they’ve been charged with, what their circumstance was, and they should make that available to the public.”

Gomes was 6years old when he came to the United States with his parents from Taboão da Serra, a smaller city in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, his mother said. Her son’s dreams include becoming a professional volleyball player, she said, and he has received letters of interest from college coaches.

A photo of Marcelo Gomes Da Silva with his girlfriend was displayed his bedroom in Milford.Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff

Pereira, who with her husband work to provide cleaning services and sometimes painting of their clients’ homes, said she’s always hoped an opportunity would open for her son to become a citizen. She thought he’d be eligible for DACA, an Obama-era program for immigrant children brought to the United States by their parents, but the program stopped accepting first-time applicants during President Trump’s first term.

“I hope from the bottom of my heart that this scare he’s experiencing doesn’t impact his dreams and doesn’t lead him to give up,” she said. “That’s my biggest concern. That he’d stop being the dreamer boy he is.”

Globe staff writers John R. Ellement and Shelley Murphy contributed to this report.

Marcela Rodrigues can be reached at marcela.rodrigues@globe.com. Dan Glaun can be reached at dan.glaun@globe.com. Follow him @dglaun.