Massachusetts Sheriff Released Brazilian Man Three Times Before ICE Arrest in Vehicular Homicide Case

Heriton Da Silva Aredes, a Brazilian national with a rap sheet stretching back decades, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on August 6 in Taunton, Massachusetts. It took three missed opportunities to get there.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, Aredes was deported in October 2008 after multiple prior arrests. He came back into the country illegally at some point after that. His criminal record includes assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, assault and battery, using a motor vehicle without authority, refusing to identify himself while operating a vehicle, furnishing a false name, reckless operation, and refusing identification, per DHS.

ICE Boston issued a detainer for Aredes after he was arrested in Middleboro, Massachusetts, in August 2023. A detainer asks local authorities to hold someone up to 48 hours beyond their release date so ICE can take custody. Massachusetts officials didn't honor it. Aredes was released. He was arrested again later in Stoughton and released again, once more without ICE being notified, according to Just the News.

This July, Aredes was charged with motor vehicle homicide by negligent operation. He was arraigned on that charge. Then, on July 25, the Bristol House of Corrections released him a third time, again without alerting ICE or honoring the detainer, DHS said. ICE tracked him down and made the arrest on August 6.

Acting ICE Boston Field Office Director David Wesling didn't mince words. "Sadly, it appears as though Bristol County Sheriff Paul Heroux followed through on his promise to not cooperate with ICE, resulting in the release of this habitual criminal illegal alien offender, who is currently charged with vehicular homicide, back into his constituents' community," Wesling said in the DHS release. "Had any of the prior detainers been honored, lives would have been saved."

Sheriff Heroux isn't backing down. He told the Boston Herald his department is bound by a 2017 Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling, Lunn v. Commonwealth, which held that state and local law enforcement cannot detain someone solely on the basis of a federal civil immigration detainer once that person is otherwise entitled to release, including after posting bail.

"This is another example of how ICE Boston wants me to break state law, period," Heroux said. "State law says that if someone posts bail, regardless of their immigration status or whether they are a citizen or not, we have to let that person go. Period, full stop... That is the Lunn decision which ICE knows about. We are not allowed to hold somebody after they post bail. And what ICE is asking me to do is break state law, and I'm not going to do it."

The Lunn decision is binding precedent in Massachusetts, and it draws a distinction between civil immigration detainers, which ICE issues administratively without a judicial warrant, and criminal holds ordered by a judge. Critics of sanctuary policies argue that distinction becomes meaningless when the person released goes on to kill someone. Supporters of the ruling argue that holding someone in jail without a judicial warrant, based solely on immigration status, raises Fourth Amendment concerns the court took seriously.

Aredes's case wasn't the only one making headlines this week. Just the News reported that days after his arrest, ICE detained Manuel Ernesto Hernandez-Umana, a Salvadoran national, in New York following a boat accident that killed a woman and her infant. Hernandez-Umana was allegedly running unlicensed tours in New York Harbor on an overloaded vessel.

Separately, ICE detention itself came under scrutiny this month after Edwin Lopez-Cornejo, a 39-year-old Salvadoran migrant, died August 1 at University Hospital in Newark after a medical emergency at the Delaney Hall detention facility, according to CNN and ICE's own statement. ICE listed his age as 41; his family says he was 39. His 12-year-old daughter said she was never allowed to see him before he died. His mother, Maria Cornejo, is demanding an independent investigation, the release of his medical records, and the closure of the privately run GEO Group facility. The cause of death remains pending a medical examination.

CNN reported that Lopez-Cornejo is one of more than 50 detainees who have died in ICE custody since President Trump returned to office, with 2025 marking the highest annual total in at least two decades and 2026 on pace to exceed it. No wrongdoing has been established in his death, and ICE has not been charged with any crime related to it. Questions over sanctuary-policy releases tied to fatal crashes and detainee deaths inside ICE facilities now test how much authority states, courts, and the federal government each get over immigration enforcement.

Bristol County officials have not said whether they plan to change their policy on ICE detainers. ICE has not said whether it will pursue additional legal avenues to compel compliance in Massachusetts.